When the Ship Fell
by BepisLover
Summary: When the Aurora went down, all the pods were supposed to eject. While only one was recorded leaving the ship, two had deployed too late to be recorded. Very different from in-game lore, rated M.
1. The pod, and the new oceanic life

" _All systems online. Preparing to launch. Launching early…"_

The man in the seat opened his eyes, and looked around the small room. The man groaned and grabbed his head, a large bruise on his forehead. The man tapped the release button on his chair to get up, then lifted the bar in front of him, got up while looking around.

The room had a small monitor near a Fabricator, a ladder near the Fabricator, and a hatch on the floor right next to the ladder. The man looked at the floor, seeing a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit. The man looked up after hearing a beep.

"Five hours after deployment. Four and a forty-five minutes since landing. Ocean planet. Five pieces of land all around the planet. Nitrogen-Oxygen thick air. 19% Oxygen, 68% Nitrogen, 4% Hydrogen and 9% Mixture. Many useful minerals are underwater, atmosphere with similar composition to Earth. Hello. I am your survival guide. This lifeboat contains a contact system, fabricator, storage, health systems, life support systems, and a constructor on the wall next to your all-environment suit. Call me Sydney."

"Well Sydney, how in the world do you think I will be able to breathe underwater?"

"There is a large tank that comes with the all environment suit, and a small filter on the back of the tank that takes in oxygen. If you aren't panicking, you have about a minute of oxygen before you start to feel a little off, and another 20 seconds for you to black out."

The man got in the suit and grabbed the constructor, setting off through the bottom hatch. The man was amazed at all the life. The man, Ned, looked closely at a large fish that had two membranes. Ned snatched it and put it into the suits storage in the front. He grabbed small and large quartz crystals and some salt in a little baggies until he was full, when he went back to the life pod.

"Say, Sydney." Ned said, cooking a fish called a "Peeper" and converting another fish, "Airsack" into water.

"Yes?"

"Could you make a map of how the ship crashed, with a key?"

"Yes… Loading onto screen."

Ned looked around and saw a screen with a small box in the corner, labeling green as the recorded escape pod, red as the huge part of the ship, white as the bridge, and blue as the front, and grey as little pieces, and there was a pale blue ocean.

It shoved the pale blue a long ways away and red being huge, everything intact. The green flew out and slowed down as the Aurora hit the water and stopped, hitting a sandbar, then white flew off and hit the water a few hundred meters away, but floated, then the blue fell down, deep down, then went out of radar. Grey went everywhere.

"The front split into two pieces just before it got out of sight, and the escape pod shown was the second pod launched. Your pod landed nearly two miles away."

"Wait, my pod wasn't recorded?"

"No."

"And where is the second one, could restart the map with the second pod as purple?"

"Loading…"

The purple one had landed nearly 15 miles away, then sank after nearly a minute.

"There was a message from that pod… It isn't fully loaded, want me to work on that?"

"Sure." Ned ate the Peeper and drank some water, dumped all his stuff on the ground and said, "I want you to scan this and see what things I could make with my current tools."

Ned jumped in and started to collect again, this time finding an area where the water had a green fog, and large "Creepvine" rose to the surface, some with gold, glowing seeds.

Ned returned to the pod and dumped all his stuff again then asked,

"What can I make?"

"Glass. If you got meat cured food. With the stuff you just put down you could make silicone rubber, and if you got titanium, you could make a knife. If you got a knife, you could get more things. You can break little pieces of rock of the wall that pop out and get minerals."

Ned went back into the blue, now tried breaking rock outcroppings, and got a lot of odd looking stuff, fused with the rock. He got back to the pod and dumped his stuff.

"Now?"

"A knife, and if you got something containing lots of acid, or similar, you could make a battery. Want me to make that knife? It will take two minutes to extract titanium from the rock and only seconds to make the knife so expect it soon."

"Yes, make the knife please."

Ned dropped down into the sea again. The original cheer had faded and boredom and sadness had set in. Ned filled himself up with lots of purple mushrooms that he quickly learned to pick with care. Ned surfaced and breathing in Oxygen after being underwater for too long.

The knife was sitting on the Fabricator, then Ned dumped his stuff, though was careful with the mushshrooms, and asked the repetitive question.

"Two batteries, and a computer chip. If you make both, you can make a Builder, in which you can build a larger base, and I can download myself into."

"Could you make it?"

"It will be finished in about five minutes."

Ned was off again, this time he brought back some pieces of the Aurora for Sydney to scan. Ned then left, bringing heaps of the metal in.

Ned got in the pod and dumped a large piece with a clatter.

"The Aurora was made of primarily Titanium, Copper, Silver, gold, and many other resources. The outer skin was 66% Titanium, and with what you have, I could get you a nearly a pound of Titanium."

"Please make it."

"Builder finished. Battery finished."

Ned took the Builder and spent a few minutes looking at the stuff there was to build, then sat up. Ned looked at all the stuff.

"Sydney, please extract all useful resources from all of this, just the resources."

"Yes."

Ned dropped down with an idea. If he could establish a base a little far off, he would be able to get more resources while being in a good area.

He had finished picking a few "Acid Mushrooms" when something bit down on his leg, hard. Ned looked back and shook his leg, tearing his skin and causing way more pain.

Ned freaked out and kicked at the creature as it released and went for a more direct bite. Ned stabbed the knife into the creature as it closed itself around his chest.

Ned took out the knife then rammed the knife into the eye of the creature, then it released him and swam off with his knife still in it's eye. Ned quickly swam off, feeling weak and lightheaded. Ned surfaced, breathing in the oxygen, the sweet, life sustaining oxygen.

Ned returned to the pod and laid down on the small bed that was in the pod and suddenly the small opening closed and… Nothing. Ned sat there, blinking.

"Scanning… Scanning…"

When Ned heard this he understood. The pod was initializing the emergency health sequence.

"Deep punctures on leg and chest, and a fractured rib. Blunt force trauma has damaged nerves in the Frontal lobe. Healing flesh wounds will take five minutes, fixing the fractured rib will take seven minutes and the nerve damage… Fixable."

"Sydney, how much will it take until you're done?"

"Five hours to seven hours. Would you like me to fix your nerve damage now or when you sleep. While you're sleeping will be convenient and easier, and more of a chance to not kill you." Sydney said.

"What is the chance I'll die?" Ned asked, sitting there, hoping the best.

"99.9999999, etc%. If you don't let me help, that is. If you let me help, 97%. If I do this in your sleep, it drops to 67%."

"Then I guess you'll fix my brain up later, now please, go faster, how long have I been in here already?"

"Three minutes, five seconds and 83 milliseconds on the time you ended your question. And you would know when I started to operate."

"Why? Why Sydney? Sydney?" Ned asked, the yelled as pain prickled through his body. "What the- Sydney?"

Ned felt pain intensifying on his legs and chest, until it felt like hot metal that was sitting in the sun for hours was wrapped around his chest and leg. After a bit the pain on his leg started to cool down until it felt like normal, then after a long time Ned felt his chest start to cool.

"Operation complete. Extra suits are where you found your first one. I advise using the ripped one for resources, such as some silicone rubber. Or bags." Sydney said, opening the opening to the bed.

"Sydney I would like you to use titanium and as much of this suit you need to make a bigger and sharper knife." Ned said, getting out of the suit and being surprised by what he was wearing.

Ned was wearing a shirt that said,

I Love

Planets

"Yes."

Ned grabbed another suit and slipped into it, but this one had goggles and small flippers. Ned climbed up the ladder, then got up on the top.

Ned looked out at the Aurora, it's glory had faded as it's skin burnt and it's insides melted. Ned remembered one thing about the Aurora's structure, that it was meant for very light, gentle care, and it's nuclear burners were in the back, along with most power related things.

Ned jumped off the side of the pod and dived down a few meters then swam towards the green area to collect more seeds. Ned filled himself with seeds then returned for his knife, which looked a little bit like a large dagger than a knife now.

Ned went back into the water, searching for outcroppings that he could easily break off. He wrapped his arm around one and twisted, breaking it off. Ned moved a few meters to the Aurora and saw a gigantic tube or coral.

Ned entered it, and as far as he could see, which wasn't far, there were little outcroppings. Ned swam up for some oxygen the dove down and into the tube, propelling himself in a bit before starting to gather the resources.

Ned used his knife to carve out some of the soft flesh on the inside of the tube before leaving. Ned left quickly for the surface and swam towards as it suddenly went from decently bright to dark.

Ned climbed into the pod from the bottom and heard a beep.

"Message has been successfully downloaded. Play it on the transmitter."

Ned kicked over a bunch of rock to get to the transmitter. Ned looked at the controls then just pressed a button. It beeped then spoke in a slightly male voice.

"Playing message. Occurs in 5. 4. 3. 2. 1."

Ned listened as a female's voice played.

"Help, I landed far out away from the Aurora and the floatation devices failed to deploy correctly and got teared, I am attempting to repair them, expect radio to cut *Beep*."

"Message ended."

Ned sighed. There was no way she survived. If she had survived the impact, which she had, she had sunk, and there was nothing to rest on for miles.

Ned looked down at the mess on the floor and started picking some of it up and putting it in the storage of the pod. He looked around for the Fabricator and looked through what he wanted to build.

Ned stopped scrolling when he saw something called "SeaGlide". Ned checked what he needed, then shouted,

"Sydney!"

"Yes?"

Ned checked the SeaGlide again for what he exactly needed then read it out to Sydney.

"To make that, it will take about ten minutes. I recommend sleep. Now."

Ned sighed and took off the suit and crawled into bed. He looked up at the ceiling as the opening shut.

"Initializing sleep enhancer."

Ned felt himself slip off in a matter of seconds into blissful nothingness, all the pain slipping away like a bad dream. But he wouldn't be away from it for long…

A/U: No pre-typing means a longer time between chapters, but expect a chapter each month at the very least.

I accept suggestions (criticism), and OC's, though I will only accept three OC's, unless it's a animal.


	2. Problem with oxygen, and new equipment

Ned woke up sweaty, his head aching. Ned jumped up and hit his head on the ceiling, causing Ned to fall back to the bed, holding his head. He hit the opening shutters, wanting to get out. The shutters shot up and Ned crawled out of the bed and fell down to the floor, panting.

Ned pulled himself up with the ladder and looked around on the floor for his environmental suit. Ned picked up the suit and put it on before noticing his dry mouth and thirst. He dived through the bottom hatch and swam around until finding a few Airsacks and two Peepers, then looped back around to the pod. Ned popped through the hatch and moved to the Fabricator, turning the Airsacks into water. He then drank three and kept five, then cooked and cured the Peepers he had caught.

Ned ate the cooked one then looked around the fabricator.

"Sydney… Sydney?"

"Yes?"

"Is the SeaGlide finished?" Ned asked kicking copper away from the lower hatch.

"Yes. It is in the storage."

Ned opened the storage and pulled out the SeaGlide easily, as it was on the top. Ned then dived into the water, then turned the SeaGlide on. Suddenly he shot off, zooming through the water. Ned quickly learned how to steer, and became effectively faster at gathering resources. He entered the large tube he saw earlier the other day and filled up on rocks then returned, then went out again, repeating a few times until...

Ned turned towards the large tube and saw it in the distance when, Beep!

Ned slowed quickly in the water, but he was confused. Ned swam to the surface then hit the SeaGlide, trying to get it on again.

Ned looked all around it until seeing on it's Screen it was "NO POWER". He sighed and turned to the pod, which looked like a hundred miles away. Ned sighed again then started to swim towards the pod, getting to it faster than he expected. He climbed up, chucking everything but the SeaGlide, then sat on one of the seats and examined where to replace the battery.

"Sydney, make three batteries." Ned said, flipping the SeaGlide over.

"One more Acid mushroom required."

"Fine, just make as much as you can right now."

Ned sat up to dive after finding a small hole for the battery on the SeaGlide. Ned dropped into the water. He felt sluggishly as he went over to the nearest patch of acid mushrooms and picking three then going back to the pod, feeling slower than a sloth in tar.

Ned got to the pod before noticing that it was slowly drifting from the Aurora. He surfaced and pushed the pod a little, then got in. Ned gently put the mushrooms down then rummaged through everything in the storage, trying to find the block of coral he had gotten from the tube. Ned's hand hit the little uneven cube after a little bit of searching. Ned looked at the cube, but instead of it being soft like before, it had hardened and become stiff. Ned chucked it aside after figuring he would get more later.

"Sydney? Could you make as many batteries as possible?" Ned asked, putting his goggles back on.

"I am able to make two more. If you wait a few seconds, you can get one battery." Sydney said.

Ned sat down on the chair he had sat in from the start, then picked up the SeaGlide from the floor next to the chair. Ned opened the small panel to pull the battery out.

"Battery done."

Ned got up with the SeaGlide and grabbed the battery from the fabricator, slamming it into the battery hole then dived into the water after making sure he had his knife and Builder.

Ned quickly shot towards the gigantic tube, getting there in a matter of seconds. He collected a lot of rock then carved out a very large chunk of the soft stuff then swam back to the pod after almost completely filling up. Ned climbed down the ladder then jumped down. Ned dumped everything but the chunk he had harvested, then called for Sydney.

"Yes?"

"Could you scan this chunk of coral and tell me all about it, and could you harvest everything useful from all the rock on the floor?" Ned asked, "and are you done with the batteries?"

"Yes, they're in the storage."

Ned took the batteries out then set off again, collecting mainly twisted metal pieces from the Aurora and quartz. Ned had a few encounters with the creature that had attacked him just last day, but this time he knew to stick a few feet away from them or more. Ned swam up to a creepvine then ripped off a leaf, then swam to the surface. Ned bit a piece from the leaf which in hindsight wasn't the smartest. Ned coughed and sputtered, as the leaf was surprising bitter and frighteningly sharp on places. Ned lowered down again and cut off a part of the stem, then ate it after going to the surface. It tasted more like very watery celery with a somewhat soft structure instead of hard.

Ned realized that after what the leaf tasted like, he would've though the stem tasted worse, if he was on Earth. Earth, as Ned could remember it, wasn't too bad. It just was a little cold and a little over populated, even after many years of getting people out of there and onto other planets.

Ned also remembered something about Earth. So long ago, humans thought Earth was extremely unique, and the only planet in the galaxy full of life. How wrong they were. Ned realized he was just sitting there above the surface, wasting time in which he could get bitten.

Ned left the green area to go a little away from the Aurora, wanting to get fresh resources. He went down some and as it got darker, so did the odd fog-like, something, that reduced his vision even further.

Ned could see the bottom after a few seconds of diving straight down, seeing red grass covering the sand in patches. Ned saw a lump of sand, so he nudged it. Ned started to dig until he found some chunks that were deep tan or very light brown, the shade of copper. Ned quickly grabbed a bunch of them and filled himself with a few, then went on to explore the area. Ned saw another lump after a while, so knowing what was under, he dug some sand away, but before he could get any further, the lump burst and something slammed into Ned.

The two things Ned could instantly register is, large sharp mouth, and armored beast attacking. Ned grabbed the area just behind the corners of the mouth where the armor gave Ned a good grip, which just kept his body far enough from the mouth.

Ned looked behind him to see a wall approaching quickly as the creature pushed him. Ned felt adrenaline rush through his body as though strength was travelling to his muscles. Ned kicked out his feet in the opposite direction of the creature, trying to slow it down.

Ned hit the wall with a thunk that was somewhat softened by his tank. Ned screamed in agony, even if it was silent due to the oxygen mask on his mouth. Ned pushed on the creature, kicking his feet, trying to get up. Ned struggled to pull himself from the wall, starting to feel low of oxygen.

Ned felt so weak. He was going to die here, and Headquarters didn't even know anything had gone wrong at any stage of this. Ned let go of the creature and quickly dodged to the side, or at least as as fast he could go. The creature caught his arm, ripping his flesh and muscle.

Ned kicked the creature in the eye, trying to do something similar to when he was attacked by that other thing. It didn't give up though, but neither would Ned. He kept kicking the things eye, until the creature did and little twist which threw Ned into the wall, knocking off his mask and broke something.

Ned screamed out in pain, even if he did try to stop himself, it was just too unbearable. Ned had let out all his oxygen, and was still trapped by the creature. Ned, in a last attempt as his world slowly faded from comprehension, grabbed the animal's eye and yanked it out. It let go instantly and writhed in pain.

Ned felt no sympathy, as it had tried to kill him. Ned kicked it in the teeth as he swam to the surface, his vision becoming blurred and dark. Ned surfaced just as he was going to become too weak to move. He breathed in the air, treating it as though it were diamonds. Ned felt it warm his body, as though he was by a vent giving out hot air. Ned looked around for the pod, but couldn't see it.

Ned dived down, looking around, but he couldn't see anything but cracked glass. Ned surfaced again, took off his goggles and put on his oxygen mask. He dived under again, this time seeing a creepvine swaying in the distance. Ned breathed in, expecting air, but instead got a mouthful of disgusting water.

Ned quickly surfaced and took off the tank and mask, then examined the tank. The back was flattened and the thing that drew in oxygen was ripped off, instead, there was just a short open tube. Ned sighed, before remembering that the goggles showed the pod's beacon.

Ned flipped down the goggles then was reminded that the goggles were smashed. Ned had forgotten to feel pain just up to then. Ned winced, looking at his arm. He could move it, but was painful, and bloody. The ripped muscle was bleeding faster than water falls down a waterfall, and Ned knew he would bleed out before ever having a chance of finding the pod.

Ned ripped off a large amount of his suit off then wrapped his wound in it, feeling the pain, somewhat subside. Ned started to swim towards where he remembered seeing the creepvine. After a little bit of swimming, Ned dived under, finding himself in the back of the forest. Ned looked around above water, now being able to see the pod, a few meters away from where he remembered it being.

Ned swam quickly to it, using his SeaGlide. He arrived in no time, and he quickly climbed up, them jumped down. Ned fell to the floor, feeling weak.

"Are you in an emergency situation?"

"Yes!"

Ned yelled to relieve himself of some pain.

"Scanning! Shattered shoulder blade, gouge in skin. Some bruising to the back. Starting to operate. This will take six or seven hours."

"Wait what I didn't hear you? FUCK! SYDNEY!"

Before long, Ned blacked out from the pain. When he came to, his shoulder felt like it was in hell. Ned looked down at it to see it was wrapped in something, like a towel, but not a cast or anything.

Ned got out of the bed and peeked outside. It was morning, as he could see the blue sky from the hatch. He moved his arm, it feeling stiff and burning hot.

"I would advise resting for a bit, at least not going into the waters." Sydney said suddenly.

Ned nodded then reached into his storage on his suit and dumped all of it out. Ned looked down at the chunks.

"Hey, Sydney, do you think you could scan these things and extract resources from everything else I put on the floor?" Ned said, gesturing to the dark tan pieces.

"Sure. Scanning them…"

Ned looked at his arm and started to move it experimentally, figuring out how fragile it was.

"Scanned. 87% copper, 3% rock, 10% iron, and 10% titanium. Do you want me to extract each resource?" Sydney said.

"Yes, that would be great."

Ned got up and removed the "cast". The skin was healed but a lighter shade of his tan, and was somewhat higher than the other skin around it. Ned started to move it, picking things up with it, until he got use to it's stiffness, or the stiff got… Un-stiffened.

"Finished." Sydney surprised Ned, causing him to jump up from his chair.

"Cool great, could you make some more glass, then find out how I make something that can repair things."

"A welder, a hammer, or, a repairten." Sydney said quickly.

"Uh, what do I need for a… Repairten?"

"A powercell, a titanium bar, a wiring kit, and silver."

"Well, looks like I might have enough for that." Ned muttered, going through the fabricator.

Ned made the silicone, the powercell, the kit, and then the titanium bar, using half of his things. Ned sighed, then scrolled through it, looking for the repairten. Ned hit the bottom of what the fabricator knew, causing it to close.

"Sydney, could you make the repairten?"

"I am unable to make such equipment. The constructor is used for this."

Ned got up the ladder, then dived in, seeing the constructor he put out a good seven meters away. Ned dived in and swam to in, pushing it to the pod, then he climbed onto it once it was stable.

Ned scrolled through it's things, then clicked on repairten. Suddenly four things popped up and made a bucket looking like thing with a control panel on the side. It was kinda small, but then it plopped into the water, then floated up to the surface. Ned swam to it, then pulled it down and up the bottom hatch on the pod. Ned emptied it then chucked the goggles into the thing. Ned then went around through the controls, then clicked on, "Repair object in hatch". Ned got up and watched as... Nothing happened.

Ned looked at the panel to see in red, "NOT ENOUGH RESOURCES". He sighed then looked at where it listed what it needed. It need two glass and one silicone.

Ned plopped the stuff in it then hit the repair thing. Ned looked inside to see some fixed goggles. Ned then chucked his tank in and some titanium then had it repair it, then looked at the tank, with it's still missing oxygen intake. Ned sighed, knowing that was a problem. Ned looked in the fabricator and made another tank, then noticed he now had another problem.

Ned got some of his second suit and used that to tie the second tank to the protective vest that held the mask and tanks together, then searched for something tube-like in his room.

"Sydney, could you make a foot long of tube, make it flexible, and make it out of anything, even one of the suits?"

"Yes. It will take one of the suits."

Ned looked back at the tanks and then looked around for his knife. He grabbed it from the floor and carved a very small hole in the tank, just as big as the tube. Ned then grabbed the existing tube and plugged it into the second tank's hole, then wait for the tube to be finished, which felt like forever until Sydney finally spoke.

"Tube finished."

Ned looked around for it, to find it on the fabricator. He reached over and grabbed it, then cut a hole in the original tube that was plugged into each tank, then shoved in the tube, it fitting, but it was too small. The hole was a little two big and Ned messed it up. Ned felt a warm heat rise to his face, then he grabbed the tanks and threw them away from him, kicking the wall then he crawled into the bed with only his thoughts for a few hours before he would fall into that bliss again.

A/N: Well, this has certainly been hard to write, but I have managed to bring it out way faster than I imagined! If you didn't like the story or saw flaws in it, leave some criticism!


	3. The Glider, and looking for survivors

_Special A/N:_ The Seamoth Glider was **my original design** , and **not in the game**. It was made to conserve energy, if you want details, go ahead and ask in the reviews. The Seamoth Glider is long and slender, enough for a chair, which spins when the engine is off, a human to sit in the chair and crouch in the back near the engine. (Details are also on my Tumblr account, subnauticalover, it should be tagged SubnauticaWander,and fanfic, just search that in my blog, or however you feel like finding it.)

Ned woke, still frustrated, although with a new plan. He slipped off the bed then grabbed the tanks -which luckily weren't damaged- and grabbed the tube that was still useful. Ned fed the tubing between the tanks so they were connected like before, the Ned used some glue-like substance he found in the cube of coral he got to seal the tubes to the tanks, then Ned, before doing anything else, needed that oxygen intake.

"Sydney, I need a oxygen intake thingy, quick."

"Building…"

Ned divided down back into the water and grabbed some stuff then resurfaced a few meters away from the pod, even though he had gone straight down. Ned climbed up into the pod, dumped all the stuff then looked for the oxygen intake.

"Sydney, is it done? The oxygen thing?"

"Yes, it is in the storage."

Ned opened the storage to see only some titanium, copper, and a small amount of silver left, with the oxygen thing on top. Ned picked it up then moved backwards and tripped over all the clutter on the ground, landing straight on some rock.

Ned groaned then got up and and looked around. Everything seemed to be on the ground. Minerals, equipment, rock, suit pieces and tubing, and even the extra suits were on the ground. Ned moved back to the tanks and lined up the oxygen intake tube with the tube. Ned then angled the knife just right and cut the oxygen intake tube a hole to the tank's tube. Ned slowly lifted in the tube and then stopped when it was just in, glueing it in place.

Ned waited, holding it for a little until it dried. Ned then put it on and jumped up and down, making sure it was all okay. The oxygen intake didn't even move, though the vest felt heavier from the new tank.

"Sydney! Do you have blueprints for any transportation device?"

"I have four, but only one seems useful at this time and it is the second cheapest. It only requires three light titanium bars, five glass, a wiring kit, two powercells, nine motors, advanced control system kit, draining system kit, oxygen kit, and one compression system kit. We have a little more than half of the resources."

"Okay, uh, make all that we can, and extract materials from anything I put on the floor."

Ned put everything but rocks and metal bits into the storage, picked up the knife and builder, then put the repairten in the bed. Ned then used his seaglide to grab as much stuff as he could, and after just a few hours into the afternoon, Ned had gone through all his batteries, and was on his last leg in terms of confidence. He was just sitting around the pod, watching stuff get extracted from the rocks, as if slowly being pulled apart.

Ned sighed. He hadn't been completely full or satisfied with a wet mouth for the past few days and it was doing a number on his physical and mental state. Ned yawned as he looked up through the hatch, seeing the sun peek slowly into view, and after only a few hours it had filled the entire hatch and hurt his eyes. Ned got up and sat in a corner. He watched in awe, seeing the effect of the sun shining directly in the hatch. It looked like a thin line of sunlight shown in, but didn't really reflect from the floor, making the rest of the room be dark, and it looked other worldly, which was ironic because it truly was.

Ned watched as the light slowly shifted to the wall, until it hit the wall and the whole room brightened faster than Ned could see. He yawned, staring at the same spot as his eyes slowly glazed over, making it look like he was dead, or un-seeing. Ned blinked and shook his head, trying to refocus from his thought process. He got up and jumped into the water and grabbed some acid mushrooms, then returned to his corner in the pod.

"Sydney, spare some copper and make some batteries with these." Ned said, pushing the mushrooms aside.

"Sure."

Ned grabbed one of the water bottles and sipped from it, it somehow still being cold. He sipped from it until there was no more water in the bottle, at that time it was night, so Ned climbed into the bed, throwing aside the repairten.

Ned woke with a jolt. The emergency lights were on and the lights were off, everything was off, and the shutter for the bed was almost fully closed. Ned crawled through the small gap and leaned against the ladder, still half asleep.

"Sydney! Sydney what is going on?"

"The pod only has one third of it's power left, due to it being still night, and I'm taking up too much power making things. By the way, we just have the oxygen kit and control kit left, along with two glass and three motors."

"Holy crap! Just, please turn off the lights and that damn noise, I need sleep, I can already kinda see the sun on the horizon, you're fine."

"Ok."

The lights turned off, then the noise. Ned sighed, getting back into the bed and staring through the gap and through the hatch, at the stars. Ned remembered exactly which one was THE Sun. It was the one that was, somewhat looking like the North Star, but if Ned could remember, the direction The Sun was in was pointing west. Ned started to remember the month he spent on the Aurora. Ned remembered that he was in the S Section, and that his dad was in the T Section, and their rooms were right next to each other, their halls separated only by a door.

Ned's eyes teared up as he thought about his dad, the tears turning into sobbing as Ned remembered his dad. Ned calmed himself down a bit, remembering how his dad was behind him all the way into the S-T Section pod cabinet, and how while getting in his pod there was an explosion that caused his pod to become loose and fall out sooner than it was supposed to. But there was still more than twenty pods to pick from.

Ned had even seen his dad climb up onto another pod before his fell. He sighed and got up after Sydney alerted him to the pod having sufficient enough power input to continue making things. Ned got everything on and dived down, grabbed every resource he could hold, then returned to the pod, repeated the process twice then he sat down again.

"I need seven quartz, a lot more copper, and some more silver." Sydney alerted Ned.

He sighed and lowered back into the water, collected lots more, everything. Ned was starting to get dangerously hungry, so he got three more peepers and two airsacks, as he only had two water bottles left.

Ned cooked two peepers and cured another, then turned all the airsacks into water. He sat down and ate the peepers. Although eating the eye was gross, Sydney had informed him that the eyeballs would give him enough protein for a few days work, and creepvine would give him many vitamins he needed, even if it had high amounts of bacteria on it, a lot of them were helpful, like all food.

Ned started to sip from a water bottle, waiting for Sydney to finish. He sighed and turned over to the wall, resting for a while. Ned had been drowsing for a while when Sydney's voice spoke again, telling him to get a powercell.

"What do I need?"

"A silicone rubber roll, and two batteries."

Ned whined then said,

"Don't I already have stuff for that?"

"No, you are missing silicone rubber, and the resources for silicone rubber."

Ned groaned and dived down, zoomed to the creepvines and filled up on as much seeds as he could possibly get. He zoomed back with some seeds slipped down his suit. Ned got up the hatch kind of awkwardly then unloaded everything, which made a decent pile of creepvine seeds. Ned sat down and watched a few disappear and then the two batteries that were on the ground.

"Everything has been built and are in the storage."

Ned got up and pulled stuff out of the storage and put it in his storage, but it got full so he had to carry the three light titanium bars, which were huge, and despite being light, they were really heavy. Ned got into the water and struggled to get to the surface, then climbed just barely up the constructor. Ned typed in what he want and suddenly the bars were taken from him and the Seamoth Glider began to get constructed. He slid off the constructor and waited for it to be built. It finished and it fell down, making a awesome splash. Ned opened the hatch and swam in, closed the hatch, then the water quickly drained, and Ned took of his oxygen mask.

Ned looked at the display in front of him that showed his depth and his speed, along with his power and how much time he had of power, which said, '10 days'. Ned looked at the side display that were closer, the left one had four large bars, all of them empty, with a label saying 'No Upgrade modules'. Ned looked at the right one which showed how much oxygen was being taken out and what levels it should be at and the rate of input into the chamber. Ned looked at the buttons above him. One said, 'Engine on/off', another said 'Boost', and the last one said 'Missiles', but it wasn't glowing.

Ned looked at the controls. It was simplistic, two handle bars, shaped how you would see one in a airplane. Ned looked for anything that would make the engine run, then pressed, "Engine on/off", and there was a loud humming then it turned to soft humming.

Ned looked on the ground and laughed. The other designers must've thought of the old cars from the 2000 years or something, because there were some lousy but cool pedals. They weren't labeled so Ned just tapped one, but nothing happened. He then tapped another and he moved forwards and drifted for a long way and a decent speed, even though the engine wasn't pushing. Ned looked ahead and saw the ground. He quickly hit the pedal that did nothing and he quickly stopped. At least he knew the go and stop. Ned then looked at the other one. It looked odd, but Ned tapped it and found himself going backwards. Ned stopped and again, he drifted. He tapped the stop and he stopped instantly. Ned then looked at the handle bars.

Ned grabbed them and held down the gas, zooming forwards, then, when he only moved the left handle bar about, he did this little shuffle to whatever side he angled it in, and if he was forwards it was like a little dodge movement.

Ned had so much fun he nearly forgot about everything, in his Glider. Ned was brought back to reality when he tapped the boost while almost above water and angled up. Ned shot up above the water, so high. He was so high, he could see everything. His pod looked like a little cute ball from the height he was at, at least for a second, then his Glider started to fall.

Ned panicked and looked around. Ned looked up at the hatch, and jumped out. He knew he wasn't nearly high enough to break any bones, but he knew that he wasn't going to like it, and he wasn't going to like it any more in the ship.

Ned spread out his body like a skydiver used to do to slow them down, and kinda succeeded. Ned hit the water with a thud, and instead of going instantly right through, he kinda hit the water, then fell in. Ned quickly got up above the surface, surprised he didn't hurt that much, just some red face and, that was about it.

The suit had finally done it's job about protecting him. Ned went under, trying to find the Glider. He couldn't see it anywhere, so he decided to wait for it to be a bit brighter, as it was almost morning. Ned swam back to the pod, and when he looked up at the pod, he laughed. The Glider had landed perfectly on the pod, and better yet, it wasn't even really damaged. After pushing it off the pod, he saw the real damage. The pod hatch was shattered, and the pod was kinda dented on the corner, and he could see the fabricator off the wall with some wires still connecting the wall and the fabricator.

Ned opened the hatch for the Glider and closed it after getting in. He checked everything, and it was all fine.

Ned even checked the exterior, and it was still fine, just a small dent on the very bottom of the ring and the back, just before the engine. Ned swam back to the surface and took a sharp intake of breath. Ned swam over to the pod and climbed up onto the top looking at the two moons. The closer moon had already swung nearly halfway around the sky. He dropped right through the hatch and landed on the floor in the pod not so gracefully. Ned got up and looked around.

The repairten had ended up near the storage, the fabricator was dented on a side, and the ladder had collapsed onto itself a little, and the ceiling was slumped.

"Two solar panels have gone offline, and a powercell is broken." Sydney said.

Ned groaned, sitting back down and looking at the mess his pod was, mostly filled with useless rock. He looked up at the hatch, and finding it disgusting, the glass just sticking on the sides of the hatch, Ned reached up with his knife and knocked off remaining glass, making it look better.

Ned grabbed the fabricator, trying to fix it onto the wall. In the end he gave up and set the fabricator down, leaning it against the wall. Ned reached into the storage and took out all the water and food, finding a cured "Boomerang", two cured Peepers, and seven water bottles.

Ned grabbed some things, all the equipment including the repairten, and the ripped off fabricator, and all the resources he could carry. Ned climbed out, finding it a bit difficult. He jumped into the water next to the Glider and got in, then pulled out the builder, and scrolled until finding "Locker". Ned clicked it, and looked at the screen, which showed what was in front of it but with a see-through 'ghost' of where the locker would be.

Ned put two in the back, then pulled up the fabricator and had the builder deconstruct it. Ned then selected the fabricator and placed it right up close to the locker, but on the left piece of the chamber. Ned left a small area in between the lockers, for the small engine bay door, which really was just a small in-the-wall-hatch for you to do maintenance on the engine or let it cool. Ned then went through anything, finding a medium wall aquarium, which was short, small in width too. It had rims at the top and bottom, then it was just glass and a small hatch.

It was labeled as being able to store three small-ish fish. Ned placed it opposite from the fabricator. Ned opened the engine doors and then sat down, steering the ship to point away from the Aurora. He got up and climbed out, getting into the pod.

"Sydney, do you think you could download yourself onto a Seamoth?" Ned said, looking around for anything extra or something he needed. "And do you think you transport the data of the healing thingy over to it and heal me when I sit down, if I need it?"

"If you took out the three computers, the laser, and the rotors that control the laser, then yes. I could instal it in if it was hooked up to something like a fabrication, it has a small port on the bottom." Sydney explained.

Ned tooked out his knife, then laid down on the bed, then cut off the wires connecting the computers to the wall, then removed the rest, hauling everything into the Seamoth Glider. Ned stuck the computers were off to the side under the displays, and the laser next to the hatch.

"Hell?"

"Fuck!" Ned yelled, startled by the sudden swear from somewhere.

"Hello, how did finding all the wires go?"

"Painfully long." Ned said, sitting back into his chair.

"Installing data to computers."

Ned had tucked the wires away along the wall, and it looked good. It wasn't the best, but it would be helpful, Ned knew it. He shifted in the seat, waiting for Sydney to be done.

Ned went over his plan once more, trying to find confidence in it. He was to drive over to where the pod had landed, and searched. They would probably find the pod before finding anything else. Ned would try to find the survivor, but it was doubtful.

Ned fell asleep at one point, where he lay for a few hours, before the morning sun woke him. He blinked and looked around, his back feeling a bit stiff from not being able to lay down. He would have to find a way to make the chair reclinable, or that would hurt his back. Ned took hold of the handles, and remembered he knew nothing about the location.

"Sydney?"

"Up are you?"

"Yes, obviously, but could you mark where the pod that sank landed?"

"Sure."

Ned looked around, until looking all the way west, where he saw a purple pulsing dot. Ned sped off, enjoying the fact he could tap the gas only a little bit and accelerate so much. He sped off, dodging a few things, but most was empty landscape below, until it got too deep to see the bottom, and Ned was flying through water.

Ned looked at the beacon, it saying there was about seven miles left. Ned looked up at the boost and made sure he was angles only a few degrees up, then he tapped boost. He shot forwards and kinda skipped over the water, emerging, then barely being above the water, then diving back in.

Ned started to become unfocused, as nothing interesting was happening. He checked the beacon. Five miles. Passed a odd underwater mountain, nearly crashed. Four point five. Feels like floating. Four miles. This is very similar to the journey through space, only less long, and less eventful. And less happy. Three point five. Falling asleep slowly. Three miles. Fighting sleep at this point, wouldn't like to fall asleep brain. Two point five. So close. One mile. Ned blinked, it had become dark and more uninteresting, so much so he was slipping away faster than before.

Ned took a drink from his water and started to take small bites out of a Peeper. He sighed. Even if he was trying his hardest, his vision would kinda crap out on him and go really blurry. Ned blinked again, trying to see straight. He had to squint from the light that was coming in from the morning sun behind him, which made the water a red, orange type of color.

"Zero miles left. Calculating distance and calibrating depth with sonar. Installing …" Sydney said, waking Ned up a tiny.

Ned looked up at the beacon and saw only 1607 Meters left under the purple dot. He yawned. He would only close his eyes for a second, and… Ned rested his body, aiming the Glider down. Ned shook himself awake, getting back on driving, now not just having to squint because of the light, but also because it felt hard to keep his eyes open all the way.

Ned looked at the beacon, seeing 97 meters. He tapped the brake a little, slowing until he saw land. Actual geology, not made by man, naturally made, land. Ned moved around a few meters, until he was right on the waypoint.

"Hey Sydney?" Ned asked, pointing the Glider down.

"Do you think the woman could've survived? And please keep my depth updated."

"There is 30% chance she died, in a rough guess. If she fished like you do, about 50-50 chance. If she didn't manage to get out of the pod in about 30 seconds after the radio cut she is dead, and if she didn't get appropriate health attention or rest like you have, she has a high chance of being dead by now." Sydney explained.

"Passing safe depth. About 129 meters and growing."

"Sydney? Aren't pods waterproof? So if-"

"Objects."

Ned looked through the glass and swerved a piece of rock with pink things on it. He looked around and saw many little pieces of rock, not too big, but even more dangerous.

"Many objects ahead. A huge cloud, and a small underwater island, if you would call it that. It's rising."

Ned looked in the darkness, trying to clear his vision to look. Ned slipped through the layer and saw the island. It was small, but bigger than those rocks. And the pink things on the bottom were way more big. Ned saw the bottom of the ocean, and looked around.

Ned could only see a few outlines, but saw a light source from something that looked like a rounded, white object. He went right above it and looked down, seeing a light through the hatch, some flickering, and the outside was kinda dented, and it seemed squished.

"Hey Sydney, mind scanning this pod?"

"Sure."

Ned looked around, waiting for Sydney to be done.

"The life pod has sustained damage before being deployed, which was part of the floatation devices. When it sank it hit all those rocks, which was what gave it those small dents. It has sustained damage to its solar panels and has only twenty-six percent power. Pressure squished it down a little, but the seal seems to be intact, so does everything. Fabricator seems offline. The pods AI seems to be on, but the healing system seems offline, along with the emergency protocol system."

"Okay, could you download the AI into anything?"

"I could, but I would need a basic computer chip, and a hard drive, along with preferably a RAM, or my system data would become overwritten."

"Sure, just, do we have everything?" Ned asked looking back in the lockers.

"Everything but silver. We need five silver." Sydney said.

Ned searched around for something to use as a replacement.

"Uh, couldn't I take the computers, you take the silver, then we'll have enough." Ned said, getting up to get out.

"Don't open the hatch. Give me two seconds."

The fabricator made something white and seethrough that was like a sheet of gel. Ned picked it up and looked at it.

"What is this?"

"Basically a pressure repellant sheet."

"So I put it on the hatch? How does it not fall off?"

"Magnets, just put it on then open the hatch, go through then close the hatch and take it off." Sydney said.

Ned did what she said, then pulled up the gel sheet, then closed the hatch. He pulled it off and swam over to the pod, feeling odd pressure on mostly his face, which was the only part that the environmental suit wasn't on. Ned put the gel sheet down on the hatch of the pod and opened the pod hopefully.

It worked. Ned climbed down. The walls were all dented, and there was a slight inside tear on the metal, but most was intact. He opened up the storage and saw two silver, one water bottle, and one copper. He took it out then went to the healing area. It seemed really bad when Sydney said it, but most was intact, just the top was a little squished. Ned laid down and cut out the computers, and laser along with laser rotors, just in case.

Ned then cut out a few things, and pulled out some wires containing silver. He then climbed up and closed the hatch, sealed it, then took the sheet off, then got in the Glider using the gel sheet. Ned dumped the stuff in the lockers then sat in the seat that was turned, and flipped to face the front.

"Okay, use that silver." Ned said, starting the engine.

"The computers you brought would be good enough. There are five computers. We only need half of one, though a computer would let the code accessible."

"Sure, go right a- fuck!" Ned said, swerving a rock but still hit it.

Ned sped up, seeing only a few rocks with more than enough space in between them to fit a Glider and a half. Ned hit the boost after clearing the rocks, which pushed him only slightly above the surface, then back down. Ned braced himself for impact, which wasn't that bad.

Ned got up and out of the hatch, looking around, as the top was above the surface. He looked at the status of the Glider and saw one un-powered engine taken out with the ring twisted, and the top of the glass was slightly cracked, and the metal around the glass was cracked. Ned sighed and went kind of down, just to have a quick look around. He looked at all the weirdest fish he never saw, caught some and put them in the aquarium on the wall.

Ned jumped up on the surface and looked at the now night sky. Until then, Ned hadn't noticed how long it had been since he had last slept. He looked back at the island and saw a small overhang with a small ledge underwater that he could stop and sleep at. Ned drove over to the ledge and went forwards until he felt the Glider hit the sand, then he drove up bit, trying to get a firm hold, but the engine stopped pushing. Ned got up and out of the Glider to see the problem, figuring he would fix it in the morning if it wasn't anything too bad. He saw that the powered engine wasn't in the water and giving any thrust. Ned pushed the Glider up a bit then got back in, then tried to find out how he could lean back in it, because a stiff back wouldn't do him good.

Ned found two small levers on the chair's side, and pulled one up, making him get pushed back, so he pushed the lever back down and he slid back to the front. Ned then grabbed the second one and pulled it up, and his chair leaned back into nearly a flat surface. Ned sat down and relaxed, and in only seconds he was asleep.

A/N: There isn't many reviews so I'm definitely able to respond to all of them, given some time.


	4. Problems

A/N: Ok, so, if you actually got here in the few days after I posted this, congrats, I guess. Thank you ILikeBob for leaving a review, along with Wizard tron.

 _If you try hard enough, both can come together like a magnet._

Ned woke up with a major migraine. He blinked, staring through the windshield at the sky. Ned rubbed his head the reached for his open water bottle, and drank it all down. He didn't know how long he was asleep but the sun was only just getting over the sky.

Ned stretched and moved to unseal the hatch, but found it unsealed from last time he got out. He laughed, wondering what if the waves pulled his Glider into the waters? Ned pushed the hatch and crawled out, carrying his knife and a water bottle. He slowly made it around to a small clearing with hills surrounding everything but one side facing off the island. Ned looked in the middle, seeing a small room, with a open side. He approached it, listening closely. He passed the wall that had been pulled off, and peeked it.

Ned could smell it before he saw it, and he was lucky he did. Even as fast he closed his eyes and ran off, he had managed to get a glimpse of human remains, and a tattered suit. Ned opened his eyes, looking around the outside habitat. There was some structure, but it wasn't standing, even as new as it was.

Ned looked down on the floor and saw a odd crab thing. It noticed him too, as it had managed to clear the remains of the base. It jumped at Ned with a squeal, but he stabbed it with his knife, killing it almost instantly. Ned took the scanner from his belt and scanned the thing, Sydney warning him there were human remains in it, and it wasn't wise to be here.

Ned returned to the Glider and sat down in it shaking himself. He couldn't get over that, face. It was almost of pleasure, as if she was happy to die, bliss from what she was suffering. At that moment, Ned felt as though he wanted to die. He covered his face with his hands and faced the fact, he wasn't going home, what was the point? By the time he managed to get rescued, he would be dead from aging, even if rescue was already sent.

Ned set down his things, got the Glider working again then took off to the pod, contemplating whether it was even manageable, the survival he wished for. He felt like it had been seconds, but he was coming up to his pod no problem. Ned surfaced and got out, taking some things with him.

Ned crawled through the hatch of the escape pod, seeing it more trashed than he remembered. There were bottles on the floor, metal, coral, bags of salt, and even half a suit. He sighed and sat down. He grabbed some quartz and stuck it in the sun, making little white lines dance on the walls, as the pod shook agonizingly.

"Sydney?"

"Yes?"

Ned got up and checked his things.

"Yeah, make as many powercells as you can, using the pods resources."

Ned got to the top and took off the hatch, took apart the fabricator parts left, sent out a relay that was world wide, saying any survivors should set up a beacon at emergency frequency, and to stay alive.

Ned was going all out, or burn out. He used the knife to gouge into the walls, cutting bits off, wires, the titanium, all of it he could use he tore off. Ned took off the bottom hatch, the screen, the random things around, everything. He tore off the solar panel and with wires, a welder, and titanium, he fitted the solar panel on the Glider, right behind the hatch.

Ned went back to the pod and heard Sydney say something.

"There was a bounce-back signal of your message, sent by a pod, and it used your voice and words to make it's own message. Playing…"

"Emergency beacon made. Set up. THANK YOU!"

Ned ripped out two of the self-charging power cells and plugged it into the Glider, letting it charge. Ned panted as he tore the pod apart, destroying the walls, ceiling, and even the ladder was taken off and broken into resources,

Ned left some power and the floatation things, along with the beacon. Ned jumped in, checked were the beacon signal was coming from. It was only just a lot to the east, which Ned feared there was radiation was there. He still got ready by making sure they had long past enough for five trips to the Aurora, excluding needing protection from the radiation that had to of been caused by the Aurora.

Ned caughts some Peepers, along with Airsacks and converted them into food and water. He got in after checking everything was ready and shot off to where he was needed, Ned keeping his mind blank, as he would need to keep his sanity. He kept going for a long time only focusing on what was right in front of him, until the beacon showed only a mile away.

"RADIATION DETECTED. OVER RECOMMENDED SAFE LEVEL."

Ned kept going, wanting to see where it became lethal. After only a few seconds he heard the warning again.

"RADIATION DETECTED. LETHAL DOSES DETECTED."

Ned hesitated on going back, whether or not he should keep going and end it for him. He twirled around and shot out of the radiation, until finding a cliff, where he picked up his builder and surfaced with as much titanium and glass as he could fit, then headed for the very edge.

He went into the blueprints, and put down a room. He clicked the build, and suddenly there was a room and Ned wasn't as crammed with things. He then attached a thing going into the ground, then another room, with a hatch coming off of the room above the sand. Ned opened the hatch, swam in with the water currently rushing into the small airlock room, then Ned closed the hatch, waiting.

"Draining systems offline. No power. No oxygen. No draining systems."

Ned swore under his breath and got back out, attaching a Draining device, a power generator, and oxygen filtration system and an oxygen generator, and a power generator, with three power cells in it. He then returned to the airlock, waiting, but it was fortunately faster.

"Draining systems online. Powered. Low oxygen. Draining systems installed. Draining…"

Ned watched the water slowly go down, then he opened the bulkhead, went through and closed it, looking around. It was a little more spacious than the pod was, and it had a larger bed, and a larger space above the bed. There was nothing but free space where he could make things.

Ned made a few lockers, and a fabricator as he couldn't think of anything else, then went through his blueprints for communication things. He put a chair and desk down, and sat in the chair, scrolling to the very bottom. He remembered how to make a short ranged-emergency radio communicator, but he wanted something stronger than that. In the end, Ned didn't have his way and put the radio on the desk, listening.

"Record."

"Recording."

"Hello survivor, I am a worker from section S of the Aurora. I am afraid to get to you is impossible, as my environment suits don't seem to be doing their complete job and protecting me, and as the large amounts of lethal radiation, I can not manage to get to you. I will leave a waypoint…" Ned finished, though he became unfocused on what he exactly said.

Ned finished and leaned back, wondering if he wasn't just going to be alone. He didn't think he would keep control if he were left alone, extremely after he knew they were right there. Ned waited, for the bounce-back message to come around.

Ned woke to hear a slight beeping from the radio, and another migraine pounding away at his thoughts. He picked his head up and pressed the listen button, waiting.

"Thank you. I will arrive as fast as I can, I am in a floating hunk of probably over seven tons of metal." Ned heard his own voice say.

Ned leaned back and squeezed his head, trying to get the throbbing to stop. Why didn't the pod have something for this. He looked around the room, seeing it kinda, un-wantingly bland. Just bland then. Ned went into his builder menu, then placed down a large aquarium in the middle of the room, the placed it.

It slowly filled with water, with sand already at the bottom. Ned looked around, then looked for that cylinder that was connected to the room underground, finding it just next to the desk. Ned knew he was just subconsciously avoiding things he didn't want to think about, but he went down the cylinder, which already had a ladder in it, then dropped down the rest of the way into the bottom room.

Ned placed down two lockers next to each other, then made a thing that would filtrate water into clean water and salt, then looked around, out of ideas. He returned to the top room and looked around, trying to find something to do. He went through the airlock then caught some fish, carrying them with some water to keep them alive. Ned placed a hatch onto the large aquarium behind the chair and went through, dropping all the fish in and jumping back out, closing the hatch. Ned lay down in the bed, trying to get some proper sleep.

A/N: Sorry if the end sounded a bit off, I just didn't quite know what to put there, and I didn't want this chapter too short, extra need for it to be long is because of how dang long it took.


	5. Human

A/N: Hopefully this will be the shortest chapter I ever do. It really is more of an update. I'm going to be blunt, and I want people who read this to be blunt. If you hate this story, give some criticism. I want to make it better, because I don't feel like it is good enough. If you feel like there could be some improvements, tell me in the reviews! And remember, if you want to influence the story or make suggestions, suggest characters. The OC slots are two humans, and five animals. Just list the basic info and I'll fix it into the story, just the requirements of humans is what they specialize in, and their description, or appearance. Also, the requirements of animals is where they're found, prey or predator, what they eat, and their appearance and role. You can always put more, but I might change it for the story. Thanks!

 _The touch of a human can be better then therapy itself._

"Ned."

Ned woke to find himself in the deep waters, no oxygen tanks or mask, and lots of darkness. He expected to feel water gush into him, but he could breath, as though he had gills. Ned swam up to light, attempting to get some visual clues. He seemed to be going very fast, and soon was just beneath the water. Ned got just a little closer, then suddenly felt himself drowning.

He threw himself up, but was pushed down by a faceless human. He scratched at the arm and hands pushing him, fighting to move away. Ned saw the human laugh as he began to feel very weak and started to sink down. The last thing he saw before he fell was the human laughing and waving at him.

Ned fell, hitting his head on the desk, and the chair flipped up and whacked him, as he hit the ground with a painful thud. Ned rubbed his head, groaning and feeling tears form in his eyes. He pushed the chair off him and sat up, feeling stinging pain on his head a upper back.

Ned rubbed his back, trying to sooth the pain. Ned glanced at the desk to see the radio glowing and giving off a slight beep again. He pulled the chair up and sat down on it, clicking the button on the radio to hear a male voice, not his own.

"I am just coming into range of seeing your pod, but only just, I can't, what'd you do to it? I should be there soon, though I'm just drifting on a little piece of metal."

Ned quickly grabbed the tools he had dropped and sped through the airlock and into the Glider, turning to face the pod's beacon, then he gunned it, flying through the creepvines and saw the pod fly past over him. Ned slid to the Glider's side to cause more of a stop, then went back to next to the platform that is his pod, and climbed out of the Glider, looking around, before jumping onto the pod. Ned looked around, trying to find the man that was presumably near.

It passed nearly an hour, or that's what it felt for Ned, when he saw a small makeshift box flying to him, probably past what he could manage with a better Glider, and it hit the platform with such force, it made Ned hit the water a bounce off a little, but not before he was able to grab the man by the… Something? Ned swam up, looking for the, somebody, that had managed to live.

Ned saw a flailing figure about seventeen meters down, and slowly sinking. He dove down and grabbed the arm that was nearest and pulled him up. Admittedly, the man had to be something like 170 pounds or something, compared to Ned's measly 107 pounds.

Ned surface, and with one last tug, got the man up. He looked for the platform, or something, and found a twisted piece of metal with what resemble a wall with a beacon and a power cell. He climbed up and helped the man up.

"Well, nice to actually meet you, whatsa name?" The man panted, leaning on the remaining piece of the wall.

"Ned. Yours?"

"Stan. Preferably Stine, but eh. Also, you lived on this piece of shit?" Stan said.

Ned laughed. "No, come on, follow me."

A/N: Okay. I have no ideas for this. I am so sorry, and I really wish I was better. If you have suggestions, go ahead. This was kinda meant to be an open story, with the people reading it making up tiny parts of it to change the outcome. But hey, we're coming to the end of school! And my grades are suffering seriously. I'm so sorry it was so short.


	6. Stine

A/N: So… It's been a long time. Sorry, for that all. My computer isn't actually in my house until yesterday, and just until today, my laptop couldn't charge, because I broke off the head pin in the charger port. So, yeah. Now I'ma try to get production of these chapter back up.

Ned sat down in the chair and scooted in a bit to allow Stine into the back, then Ned closed the hatch after him. Ned sped off to his small base, which only took, something like a minute. Ned slowed to a stop next to the hatch of the base, opening the hatch, bracing himself for the water, but as always, the gel sheet held and didn't let any water in.

Ned got out and into the water, seeing Stine getting up to get out. If you want to know what going through the gel into water feels like, it's not about the gel, it's about going into the water headfirst, even though gravity is correct, at your feet. Ned swam over to the hatch and opened it, letting Stine through first, then swimming in after him, and closed the hatch.

"Draining systems initialized."

"So, is this like a full on base?" Stine asked after the water had drained halfway.

"Kinda, I mean, oxygen, heat, and some safety." Ned said, opening the bulkhead and walking through around the aquarium and down the ladder to the lower room.

Stine followed and Ned stepped to the side to let him down, and after a second, Stine had dropped to the floor and looked around.

"Sooo…?" Stine asked, looking around.

"Well, this is your room. I guess, unless you want to make it yourself, we could turn this into some sort of uh, storage room? Production room? Maybe we could get up a medbay." Ned said, looking around.

"So, when do I get my own speedy thingy?"

"When you get working. Oh and, what rank were you? Just as like, as side note." Ned asked, heading up the ladder.

"Oh, I was just one of the people who sat up just next to the captain, saw him die myself, not the funniest thing ever." Stine said, following Ned up the ladder.

"Oh, well I was in S section Engineer, and just gonna say, Losing family members isn't the best thing either."

Stine nodded and I sat down. He kinda just leaned against the wall, and we talked about families and friends, who could've survived, and even just simple personal stuff.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm needing to sleep, I don't know about you, if you want to try and get something, you can use the Glider, just, let, Sydney guide you." Ned said, getting up and moving to the bed.

"I'll go and get some things, any suggestions?"

"The little rock outcroppings, wrap your arm on them and pull, there's stuff in it, also, the white almost see through, and at night it glows, that's quartz. Watch out."

He nodded then headed for the airlock, but I yelled to him, "Make sure you have Sydney make some oxygen tanks, and a mask for you."

He looked back and nodded, then left. I sat there, staring where he had disappeared, until getting up and going to sleep.

A/N: I know this was again short, I just wanted to get something out quickly. My laptop charger port was broken and my computer is being fixed and actually fitted with a better fans. I know, it sounds stupid but I would run my steam game, go onto google docs, write a bit, play a lot, do school work, then if I don't restart my computer it'll overheat. So, yeah. Didn't have any way to get writing or really the motivation, because I could've used my tablet, but… No. But yesterday I got my computer back and today I got my laptop fixed! SO attempt at getting back on schedule! YAY!

(R.I.P my hardrive, it recently died. Expect less of a schedule until I get a new one)

Edit: I am working on a side story, for when I'm just not motivated to write this one. I'll be experimenting with a schedule, and maybe some sort of plan with you guys. Thanks to Ilikebob, and Wizard tron, who have been with me from, just about the start. Also thanks to TheCutestFish, and three people who left their name a Guest. Thanks a lot for the support, all of you. (If you pick a name as a guest, such as TheCutestFish, please keep it that way, it'll get confusing)

Extra edit: R.I.P Doc manager. I had two chapters worked out, and posted one (this one), but then Doc Manager kinda died. Sorry my dudes, I'm having a lot of issues with things and I really just need to say goodbye to my old computer, and get a actual gaming computer, one that was actually fucking meant to have more than google docs, youtube, and fanfiction open at once, before overheating. I'm trying to get Doc manager and I'm sorry for all the damn edits, I want you guys to know why my updates are so slow usually.


	7. The Wreck

Ned woke to Stine walking through the hatch, holding a lot of just… Stuff. Ned blinked, rubbing his eyes. That had been the first sleep he actually enjoyed. He swung his feet around and sat up on the bed.

"Up sleepyhead?" Stine said, opening a locker and dumping most of the stuff he had.

"Something like that. How's the sun?" Ned asked, getting up and itching his head.

"Eh, just about in the middle of the sky. I have to say, days here, have to be something like twelve hours."

Ned got to his feet and grabbed his oxygen pack, and reached into the small storage crate he had in the room, taking out a bag of beef jerky.

"I-I. I don't even want to know why you still have beef jerky." Stine said, just looking blankly at the bag.

"Here, have a bit." Ned said through a mouthful of jerky. "Was saving this for a occasion of specials. And, finding somebody is alive, is special."

Stine handed me a bottle of water, and for awhile, we just sat there in silence, eating the bag out and drinking from the water bottles.

"So where we going?" Asked Stine as we climbed into the Glider.

"Just to an, well preferably piece of the Aurora. You had to of seen them, the pieces? There was stuff flying everywhere, I could see it all the way over by my pod." Ned said, turning on the controls.

"There might be some at the bottom of this cliff." Suggested Stine.

Ned pointed the Glider straight down after clearing the cliff edge, and shot it down the cliff, soon seeing a piece of metal jutting out of the cliff side. Ned pulled up and stopped them from hitting the ground, and moved close to the ground.

"Could you attempt an area scan Sydney?" Stine asked, looking through the windshield.

"Area scan activated. Area scan loading…"

A small grid map loaded up on one of the screens in front of ned, and he saw a very large lump in front of him, coming in close. Ned pulled back, trying to stop the Glider before it hit the wreck. The white was slightly chipped off, but coming in very fast. The Glider stopped just in time, barely tapping the wreck.

Ned breathed a sigh of relief and started to drift around the wreck, looking for an opening. He saw a small opening, only wide enough for a human. He pulled up close to it, then opened the hatch, popping out, waited for Stine for just a second then we swam through it, looking around.

I used sign language to Stine to turn on the suits crown lights, which allowed them, when combined, to see about thirty feet with not a lot dimming. We swam through the small passage, seeing a few locked doors to the sides. I saw a door smashed open, and I flung myself against it as hard as I could through all the water.

It creaked, but barely moved. I signed to Stine to come over and help me. He swam over from the locker he was, then we propelled ourselves from the other door and smashed into the door. The door moved enough for Ned to slip in. He waving quickly to Stine and slipped into the room. He looked around with considerably dimmer lighting, seeing nothing, but a ocean of floating cargo, most of them still sealed shut. There was a bunch of them labeled 'food' around Ned, and he could spot another labeled 'Titanium', and even another labeled 'Blueprints'.

Ned looked around for something to pry the door open, and saw a shelf in the darkness. He swam to it, searching the other ones until getting to the ocean floor, where Ned dug around for a bit, trying to get something maybe. His hand hit something hard and he grabbed it, and pulled it out of the sand.

Ned pushed off after seeing it was a crowbar. He pulled himself to the wall next to the door and put the crowbar in between the crack and slowly cracked the door open, until something hit it and blasted it off it's hinges.

Ned looked around, trying to see what it was, to see another of those things he had gotten attacked by while trying to get those copper-rich eggs. Ned grabbed the handle of the container labeled 'Blueprints', and launched himself out of the room as it chased after him in a flurry of water currents and teeth.

Ned saw Stine's lights shine through a doorway that had only half of the door stuck to the hinges, and swam quickly away, thinking it was stupid to get them both possibly hurt. He swam out of the small hole they got in through and the creature squeezed out and chased further.

Ned stopped and smashed the crowbar into it's mouth, where it stopped instantly, then flung Ned down as it flipped up from it's momentum, where it fled. Ned looked after it, scared it was going to come back with friends. He swam back into the wreck and found stine in another cargo room, looking at a few boxes, one labeled 'Power Cells' and the other 'Batteries'.

Ned grabbed one and motioned for Stine to grab one then haul ass, as not only did their oxygen have to be getting thin, they had been there for near a minute, and the lights of the Glider had to be attracting something by now.

They ran into a problem getting the boxes in, so they had Ned hang onto the hatch handle and all three boxes, while Stine lightly moved along, only a little faster than they could swim. Ned, who didn't agree with this at all, got a bruise the size of a orange on his leg when Stine dodged some rock so fast, it flung Ned off into the rock ledge, and nearly lost all the boxes many times.

Ned quickly swam away with all the boxes muttering to himself that Stine was a horrible driver. Ned pulled in two of the boxes through the hatch, and Stine tugged in the largest. They went through the airlock, then put the boxes down near the desk. Stine sat on the floor and looked for a way to open the box he had, the battery box. Ned dug his crowbar into the rim of the blueprints box and slowly ripped off the cover, until it fell of and clanged onto the floor.

"Can you pass me that?" Stine said, sticking his hand out, which Ned handed the crowbar to him.

Ned pulled out a laminated piece of paper, and saw the words on the top, 'Solar Panel Blueprints'. He then pulled out another and saw 'Bioreactor Blueprints'. He put them back after checking what he needed, and said to Stine,

"We can get a Bioreactor and some Solar Panels? You want to get some? The Solar Panels are way easier to make."

"Huh? Oh… Yeah, I don't like the feeling of possibly loosing power suddenly and not being able to make anything to get power back on." Stine said, looking up from his box.

"So, how many batteries are there?" Ned asked, setting his box on his desk.

"About… Eh, fifty, easily." Stine said, peering into his box.

"Good, we need to get some silicon and nickel, then a wiring kit, so all in all we need some copper, titanium, gold, silver, nickel, and silicon. A lot of stuff." Ned said, standing up.

"I call the Glider!"

"Nope. It's my vehicle, make your own." Ned said, rushing to the airlock and sealing the bulkhead before Stine could get up.


	8. Solar Usage

_Power controls, both energy type, and influence wise._

Ned got into the Glider as he saw Stine get through the airlock, and quickly shot off, going straight down the cliff, figuring if he had the vehicle, he'd go a bit deeper. Ned skimmed through everything, getting… Disappointing results. He got a lot of nickel, but no silicon, and only found a little silver and a lot of titanium, and a small bit of gold, which would be enough though.

Ned returned and dumped his stuff, and lived in the Glider for two days, in which he didn't see Stine more than once a day, and… He felt lonely again. He did get a lot of progress, enough to make seven and a half solar panels.

When he got back into the Glider, Sydney spoke for the first time the whole day.

"Power low. Subsystems turning off."

"Is oxygen still on?"

"Yes, driving, oxygen, engine, and warning systems are Systems, Subsystems are interior lights, exterior lights and any things you added on."

Ned went inside the base and pried open the powercell box, took out one, then went to the Glider and swapped the cells, the returned, keeping in mind, power was still a thing with the Glider.

After a day, Ned managed to make a platform and thirteen ten feet by seven feet solar panels, but… They had no more silicon, only a bit of nickel, and no gold, and only a bit of silver, with a ton of titanium.

Stine walked through the airlock, causing Ned to wake from his nap, and seeing the massive amount of silvery-white metal looking stuff in Stine's hands.

"Hello Stine? What you got done?" Ned asked rubbing his eyes from tiredness.

"Just getting stuff to maybe make my own submarine." Stine said, going down his ladder into his room.

"Yeah, I'm going to bed, then I want to go exploring near that wreck we found earlier, because it had lots of stuff in it." Ned yelled down the ladder, then headed around to his bed.

A/N: This, well. Is, luckily a filler chapter, just because I haven't uploaded in for too long. It's the end of the school year, and you know what that means, study study study! So I'll be busy with that for awhile, but am finishing up with all of that very, very soon. I've got half of a chapter typed out already, so I hope to get that done soon.


	9. Assembler

A/N: Sorry for the long delay and slightly short nature of this chapter, but it is now summer break, and… Thanks for all the support guys. I'm going to be honest, I would have deleted this story a long time ago if it hadn't gotten the kind of support it got. Thank you guys, so, so much. I can't express how much I appreciate you all. I honestly can't explain how much ya'll have done for me.

Ned woke early, quickly sat up, grabbing his things then heading out for the wreck. He hopped into the Glider, drove to the wreck, to see it completely shifted and the entire thing was collapsed. Whatever resources were in there, they weren't going to get it anytime soon. He swam around the entire thing, then returned to the Glider, to maybe explore further.

Ned found a smaller wreck, with a storage crate that had a little bit of medical supplies. Ned jumped back into the Glider, looking around further.

Ned parked the Glider above the base then returned to it, to see what he could do with the blueprints. Ned went through them for awhile. There were 'Electric Automated Miners', 'Modification Station'.

Ned knew that if he wanted to get Assemblers online, they would need to get them built first. First up was to find some basic machine blueprints, then how big it was, and what they wanted to produce mainly. Ned looked in the box on his desk and sat down, taking a few of the laminated pieces of paper out of the box, and setting them on the desk. Ned discarded a few he already had downloaded, and another few he put back into the box, due to him already knowing how to make it from training.

'Study time, yay…' Ned though, as he set to work looking at different machine designs.

Ned's thoughts was broken by the sound of a door opening and footsteps. Stine walked into the room, holding a few creepvine seeds, and on top of it all, there was some silicon. Ned got up and grabbed the silicon off him and put it into his lockers. Stine chucked in some of the seeds in Ned's lockers, and a few in his. Ned sat back down and started he turned back to his desk, and looked around for the piece of paper he was looking at. He picked it up from under the desk, set it down, then took out his PDA, then set it down and started sketching out a design for something that was large enough to make a two fabricators at once, but would fit into a standard room. He then cleaned up the lines, and looked at it. Ned set his PDA down then took out the small cord from the port on the bottom of it and connected the cord to the bottom of the builder, where the builder started to download it and convert it into a functioning machine. Ned reviewed the design then placed the overview in the room, right next to his bed, a little closer to the desk than the lockers.

It said it needed a load of Titanium, an Advanced Wiring Kit, two Computer Chips, and a Powercell. Ned asked Sydney to make what he needed while he grabbed the Titanium. He walked over to the Fabricator and grabbed the things as they were made. Ned then grabbed a Powercell from the Powercell box and walked over to the machine's overlay, picked up the builder from the desk, then clicked on the trigger, and it started to get built.

Ned released the trigger then tossed the builder on the desk and examined the machine. It looked like a 3D printer, and it kinda was. It had a large gaping hole in the front, with two laser builders on the top and bottom of the hole. It had a small panel to the right of the production chamber, which was the panel where you could go through the menu of what it had downloaded and could build.

Ned looked at the menu, which had a few categories, 'Equipment', 'Small Machines', and 'Refined Materials'. The were also some Sub-categories, like 'Handheld Equipment' and 'Large Equipment'. Ned saw that there was another category, 'Fabricator'.

Ned went into the Sub-category, 'Handheld Equipment'. There was a stream of things, but only one was lit up, inclining it could be built with their current resources. It was called, 'Dive Hook'. It's icon looked like the Dive Reel, but there was a sharp six pronged hook tip on the titanium mesh chain.

Ned clicked on it, and the laser pointers started to build it quickly, and in only a second, it was done, and Ned picked it out of the machine, and examined it close up. It's prongs were shaped so they would go into things, but have trouble getting out. It looked like it used pressure from a small gas tank that took up most of the gun's shape and size to shoot the ok tip. It had a small battery port on top of the gas tank, and the handle was made out of titanium and the trigger was where it would be on a usual gun.

Ned set it on the desk and looked around for Stine. Ned looked in his room, then went out the airlock, and started for where he left the Glider, to find that Stine took it. Ned sighed, then went back to his desk, and picked up the water bottle that was left, and tipped it upside down to ge the last of the water from it, then he grabbed the second last water bottle, and drained a quarter of it, then took some food from the locker right next to the airlock.

Ned noticed, now that their water a food problem was beginning to become very serious. He grabbed his equipment and headed out into the vast ocean, to catch some fish.

A/N: Ok. I'm going to explain some things that I can't explain in the story, without seriously breaking the fourth wall. So, first is, this story is using some game logic and real life logic. What I mean is in Subnautica, you click on those little nodes to get metals, and it's the same in this story, but instead of clicking you have to pry it off. That's how Ned and Stine go nickel, silicon, and other things.


	10. Thoughts of Steel

A/N: WHOO! CHAPTER TEN IS OUT! I'm not going to lie, as I type this note, Chapter 9 has just been posted. Fanfiction is still open to the side as I type. It has just been posted, and I'm already writing? You wanna know why? Find out at the end of this chapter! Edit: Welp, took an unexpected vacation with family, and stress related things, sorry for the longer delay.

Stine looked around him, slowly guiding the Glider through the Creepvines, trying to find one of the seed clusters. He stopped the Glider next to a Creepvine housing a large amount of seeds. He took them off the Creepvine and into the Glider's storage locker, then he set off, back to the base.

Stine left the Glider above the base then grabbed some of the seeds and put them into the outside gardens he had placed earlier just beside the airlock, then took the rest from the Glider to the base lockers, along with some silicon that was left in the storage. Stine saw Ned looking at some of the blueprints, and when he saw Stine walk in, he grabbed the silicon off of the small pile that Stine was holding and shoved it into his locker.

Stine put some of the seeds in each of their lockers, then Stine went down the ladder to his room and sat down on the chair he had put in, then started to thrummed his fingers on the counter he put in front of the chair. Stine got up then grabbed his Builder out of one of the drawers in the counter and put down his own locker. He then grabbed all the stuff from his locker upstairs and loaded it into the new locker in his room, right next to where the ladder.

Stine then looked around his room, He thought he could maybe make it his own by putting a fabricator next to the desk. He went upstairs, got what he needed, then slapped it down. Then Stine sat down, admiring his short, somewhat remote work. Then he started to think of what he could do.

'I suppose I could go and grab more things… But I just did… It would be nice to get a gun… I could go on a fragment hunt… Yeah, I'll do that!' Stine thought to himself, getting up and quickly climbing up the ladder, then walking through the airlock. He pulled himself through the Seamoth Glider's hatch, shut it, locked it, then got situated for a long, long trip.

Stine unlocked the hatch after seeing a large thing that was highlighted in blue, indicating it was a fragment that would map out a blueprint. He pushed open the hatch as he got out, and swam over to the highlighted object and pulled out his scanner, and held down the scanner button.

Stine got back in the Glider after getting some Quartz. He got into the chair, and set off, hunting for more fragments.

Stine stopped as he found a sheer drop off. He pointed the nose down and started to go down. He started to get bored as he just went down, the light around the minisub started to fall back, scared of the darkness in the depths. Stine stopped going forwards and let himself drift downwards as he moved back to what he thought was about parallel with what would be flat ground.

Stine started to go down at an angle, until all he could see was what the beams of light from the Glider was shone upon. He checked his depth to see him get closer to one hundred-fifty meters. He saw the ground suddenly appear right in front of him, and he quickly pulled back. Stine started to explore the very rocky terrain around the vehicle.

After filling up the locker with random things, and getting a new blueprint of a charger of sorts. Stine got back into the Glider, grabbed the last bottle of water there was and drank the every last drop from it, then took out the only salted peeper he took with him and ate it. He set off back to home, while looking around himself. He watched as the light started to slowly illuminate the ridge above Stine's head.

He turned of the exterior lights when it got bright enough, and only a few seconds after that Stine let go of the controls until gravity and water stopped him a few meters from the surface. He started to go back towards the base.

Only a minute after Stine started towards the base he spotted a round, oval like white object. He guided the Glider next to it and took a closer examination. It was a badly damaged pod. It looked like it had it's heat shield broke, got scorched, then hit the water so fast it got crumpled a little.

Stine could only hope there was no body in it. He got out of the Seamoth Glider and grabbed an edge of the pod and pulled himself closer to the a hole that had been burnt through, then slowly pushed himself into the pod. There, was thankfully no body. But, due to just the fact, it made it… More scarily atmospheric. It wasn't, what Stine was expecting. He was expecting some bloated corpse, or some amount of gore. But nothing. The only thing that maybe showed somebody was in there was a PDA on the ground, and the lock on the chair being on. Stine then moved back through the hole in the metal and surfaced, took a quick breath, then dived back for the Glider.

Stine turned the Glider on to sleep mode once he got back to the base, grabbing a lot of the things he got, including a little bit of steel that he managed to get. He moved through the airlock, then put most of the minerals into Ned's locker, seeing that it was nearly full.

Speaking of Ned, he wasn't in the base. There was a new addition, a large machine to the side. Stine shrugged, then carried the steel down into his room. He looked at his room, then sat down, setting the steel on the desk, next to a microscope. Stine thought about what he could do with the steel for a while, then decided that before he tried anything he would get a bit of well deserved sleep.

A/N: Okay. I want to talk, like _**REAL TALK.**_ This is going to be a decision that will change how the chapters are for at least a decent amount of time. Do you guys think that I should keep doing chapters how I do them, sometimes short, sometimes long, with random waiting times in between? Or long chapters, but longer waiting times? Or, short chapters, and short waiting time?


	11. A few Extra Problems

A/N: Okay, so I've decided to not work on anything story wise apart from this one. I've noticed that the quality of my chapters have dropped. It's going too good for these two. How about a bit of rough parts? But even then, I don't just mean that, I just mean how I write is not getting any better.

Ned resurfaced, breathing in the warm air. He put the last Boomerang into his suits storage, then he looked at the Aurora. Ned dived back under and started to swim back to the base.

Ned opened up that hatch and got in, waiting as the water was quickly drained and air was pumped in. He opened up the bulkhead and heard Sydney's automated protocol voice say, "Low Power." Repeatedly, each time followed up with two sharp, loud beeps.

"Sydney? What power are we getting?" Ned asked, going down the ladder for Stine.

"The only power being produced is from the solar panels. The generator is out of electricity." Sydney said, still in her protocol voice.

Ned glanced around Stines room and quickly went back up the ladder. He reached into the box of power cells for a few more, only to find there were only about fifteen left. Ned grabbed four and carried them out to the generator, then replaced all the old ones. He got back inside and put the old Power Cells on his desk, noticed the huge pile that was now slowly falling off his desk.

Ned sighed. He wish he could find the blueprint for a Power Cell charger, but they couldn't find it so far. He looked in the only locker left, his locker, and looked what was in it. A bit of silicon, a water bottle, a little bit of silicone rubber, a small piece of fiber mesh, a battery, a bottle of lubricant, and an oxygen tank. Ned sighed, then closed the locker, walking right back out to get more resources. He started to swim back to the place with the red grass.

Ned found one of those lumps again, and wondered if he should even try. He grabbed some titanium from his storage, and dropped it above the lump, backing away. The titanium hit the lump, and sand flew everywhere as one of the armored things popped out of the ground, twisting around to face the titanium. The creature seemed to settle down, as Ned turned on the Seaglide, and went away as quickly as he could, going around to another hill in the field of hills. He quickly returned to the surface to get a bit more oxygen, then continued exploring, knowing that he could test the lumps by dropping things onto them.

Ned returned to the base to drop off the things he had gotten. He was pretty proud of how much he had gotten in such a small amount of time, though he had burned through two batteries. Ned turned all the Airsacks in his locker to water, then cooked and cured the other fish. He sat down at his desk, and began to drink from one of the water bottles, setting the rest on his desk, next to the great pile of power cells.

Ned put down the water bottle, and began to eat a Boomerang. He thought to himself for a moment, then was instantly interrupted by the bulkhead being opened, and Stine's voice saying his name.

"Ned?"

"Yeah? What is it?" Ned said, getting up.

"Do you know anything about the Glider's engine?" Stine said, walking around the the hole in the floor.

"No, is it broken?" Ned asked, moving towards the door.

"Just go and open the repair hatch."

Ned opened up the bulkhead, then went through the hatch and saw the Glider above him. He got inside it and crawled to the back , and opened the foot by foot repair panel. Hot air flowed out of the engine cavity, filling the room, making Ned sweat. He got into the seat and poked the top of the thing above water, then opened up the hatch. Ned breathed in the cool air, then closed the hatch, not wanting to breathe the air for too long.

Ned then looked at the engine. It looked fine, the only trouble that might be there is a lack of something to help the engine parts move with low friction. Ned sighed, got out, returned into the base, grabbed the bottle of lubricant and the small sheet fiber mesh, then returned, and tried to do it correctly. Ned was only worried that he might get the lubricant in a place that could hurt the engine.

Ned put the lid back on the lubricant, then looked at the fiber mesh. It was ruined now, so he opened up the hatch and threw it into the water, then returned to the base to put back the bottle of lubricant. Before he went out in the Seamoth Glider, he wanted to check if the assembler that he had made earlier had anything that might help. Ned spent a good twenty minutes looking through the menu, and the few things that caught his eye was a small light that runs off of a battery, and can be mounted to surfaces, and a O2 tank that was in a U shape. Ned made one of the lights, got back into the Glider, and started off the afternoon by going back down the cliff face.

Ned had gotten a fair few things, including some silver, and a chunk of nickel. He had noticed by now, his hunger and thirst, and a nagging need of sleep, as he hadn't gotten much last night. Ned started to head back home, cruising with the top just above the water as the sun slowly set. Ned just liked the look of the sun slowly setting, when he was on Earth, and when he was on the other two planets. If you actually thought about it, should you even call the sun that this planet, 4546B, was orbiting, the sun, instead of "The Star"? Ned was just used to the phrase "The Sun".

Ned dipped back down to find himself a distance past the little round sphere that was his destination. He returned, unloaded everything, then returned to his chair in front of his desk. Ned soon found himself asleep at his chair after drinking the rest of the water bottle that had already been on his desk.

Ned's rest was interrupted by a loud sound, an alarm going off, and a loud roar from outside, through the wall.

"Sydney? What is happening?" Ned asked, panicked.

"A creature attacked the side of the wall, causing a small tear on the outside. It has been wounded by this act, supposedly." Sydney said. "It was most likely chasing the thing now in the airlock."

Ned got up and moved in front of the bulkhead, waiting for it to open, assuming it was probably Stine. The door handle twisted, then the door opened and a wall of water suddenly collapsed onto the ground, going out into the rest of the room. Ned looked down at the water quickly then looked at the person who opened the door. It was indeed Stine, he, taking his mask off.

"What's with all of this water?" Ned asked, motioning towards the ground, checking down the ladder that lead to Stine's room.

"I waited for it to drain, but for some reason it didn't. Aw, crap! Thank god for the lip." Stine said, getting down to his room and checking how much water had gotten down, which was only a thin layer, due to the little bit of metal that surrounded the actual hole for Stine's room.

"Well I hope you're proud of yourself, because there was probably a reason for it not depressurising." Ned sighed, then got his mask on.

Ned made sure to close the bulkhead before getting back out into the water, where he checked if anything was near him, and saw the solar panels. Most of them were just scratched, a little bit ripped up. But four were basically ripped off the platform entirely. Ned went back in, which put more water down to Stine, causing him to yell. Ned then grabbed his habitat builder then went back outside to salvage the solar panels, then checked the wall. Indeed, the little bit that was ripped, was the kit panel, the little panel where the oxygen kit, and the draining device, etc. was behind. And the only kit that was damaged was the one that drained water, to make the base not flooded or filled with water. Ned went back and made a new draining kit, then put it in, then fixed the panel using the welder that was still in the Seamoth Glider.

Ned returned to his desk, and after remembering the sun was still down, he decided he should get some extra sleep, and deal with the solar panels later.

A/N: I can't believe that I'm actually getting my chapters longer, even if it is just by about a few hundred words added per chapter.


	12. Plans

Ned woke to Stine trying to wake him up, obviously after he saw he was successful, he stopped shaking Ned.

"Yo, have you thought of maybe getting a new vehicle, because, I might have semi-broke the Glider."

Ned jumped up, smacked his forehead on the ceiling and started shouting Stine down.

"Are you fucking kidding me? How the hell did you break it? How did you EVEN manage to break it?" Ned said, getting up from his bed.

"Just, take a look at it. It, I guess isn't that bad, and trust me, I know I've messed up. No need to shout." Stine said, refusing to make eye contact with Ned.

"No, NO NEED TO SHOUT! You realise that you haven't just messed up, you've destroyed something that was the thing that allowed us to even get around as good as we used to! Just, fuck it. Whatever. Whatever." Ned shouted, sitting down at his desk, holding his head up, trying to think straight.

What the fuck was Stine even thinking? Why? Ned wasn't even sure if they had enough to restore it to an okay state, especially because he didn't know what the damage was.

Ned got up and went through the airlock to check what the Seamoth Glider looked like now. He went through the hatch, and saw it. The glass had been broken at the top, the metal was a bit twisted, there was a large dent in the side, and there was a breach on the side, meaning the engine was waterlogged completely. And the ring was completely ripped off, even the back propeller was damaged. It was… Maybe fixable. Using the titanium that he knew that they could easily get, and the quartz that they also could easily get, they could fix the glass and the metal, and replace some of the ring. They could make a few motors, but not enough without having to search farther, and it was missing a bit of wiring, and the engine could be in any state.

Ned resurfaced and screamed in frustration through the oxygen mask. He floated, looking up at the planet that they were orbiting with, wishing that it would just hit this stupid ocean planet, maybe then it would be a bit more enjoyable.

Ned returned to the Glider and furiously pushed it a bit closer to the base, then returned to the old wreck, grabbing small panels of titanium, really only limited by oxygen.

Ned finally had enough to convert into just enough for the chassis, but not enough for the ring. He sat at his desk and thought about how he had in general reacted towards Stine. It, just wasn't what he had even expected from himself, even if Stine did deserve to be yelled at, like why wasn't he being careful?

Ned got up, used some of the quartz that was left in the bottom corner of the locker to make the glass, then started to weld up the holes. He then opened the hatch and turned it on. The water drained, and the lights turned on, letting him know that most of the wiring was working.

Ned then started to push the "gas" pedal, and the engine sputtered, pushing him forwards, then flattened out. He then got out, going around to the back. These types of repairs were meant to be done on land in an oxygen environment. Ned unscrewed the propeller, and took off the circular panel that sealed the engine off, underneath where the propeller was. He then looked at the engine, seeing only a few things that needed a bit of a fix. There was a pipe that needed to be sealed, a rotor was missing it's head piece, and a few wires were ripped out.

Ned crammed his welder in there and welded up the pipe, used some titanium to put the rotor back in, then shoved his arm in the back to get the wires. It felt like an easy fix, but Ned knew that there was probably some parts that needed replacing. He got back in and tapped the pedal. The engine started to move, then after a few seconds, stopped.

It was like it couldn't get a nice spin. It should be powerful enough to swing around over ten pounds under quite a bit of water, so it's not like the water is affecting anything.

Ned resurfed to get a bit more air, then looked at the engine, to try and find what was keeping it connected to the metal. There was a few bolts, and a small piece of metal, none of which Ned could break with what he had. He returned to the base to go through the tool list, trying to find something. He did find something, but it was going to be hard to make, because it needed six millimeters in diameter of… Diamond.

Ned knew that there was at least a hundred grams of diamond on the Aurora, and even more in the systems.

But, Ned could probably just get a wrench anyways.

"Sydney? Could I get a adjustable wrench?"

"Understood."

The fabricator lit up, then stopped, showing a wrench with the bottom bit on a small slider. Ned grabbed it, thanked Sydney, then returned to the Glider with the wrench now. He took out all the bolts, then just took out the two small bolts holding the metal piece to the engine. The engine dropped a little, then started to slide out, Ned panicking, grabbed the back of it and pushed it back in.

He resurfaced for air, then went back down and gently took the wires from their places, making the engine separate from the Glider. Ned slowly pulled it out, but the second it got free from the Glider, it dropped like a rock, and sent the glider up a bit. Ned sighed, then went back inside to get Stine.

"Yo, Stine!" Ned called down the ladder, waiting for a response.

"Yeah?" Stine asked.

"Could you help me with the huge ass engine that you ruined?"

"Sure, give me a second. And yeah… Sorry." Stine said, coming into view.

"Yeah, I'm also a bit sorry for kinda just, yelling at you." Ned said, backing away from the ladder.

Stine climbed up, and followed Ned out, where Ned motioned to the engine, and they swam over to it, then slowly got their hands under it. They lifted it up, and slowly carried it over to the airlock, where they resurfaced for air, then carried it into the the base, where it felt a lot more heavy.

"Okay, just set it down gently on the assembler next to my bed." Ned said, going around the aquarium.

Stine nodded, and they lifted it up and put it down, pushing it in.

"Sydney, please scan the engine, and tell us what needs to be replaced." Stine said, looking into the machine.

"A pipe a clogged. A pipe is clogged. A small mechanism is broken. Broken. The computerised control is corrupt. A little bit of water damage to a few part." Sydney said after scanning.

"Could you fix them with what we have?" Ned asked.

"The pipe can can be unclogged, and only a bit of the water damage can be fixed."

"Is it better to just make a new engine?" Ned asked as Stine started to look at the aquarium.

"With current resources and resource input, It would be better to make a new engine, should be a bit more of a powerful one." Sydney said, her voice slowing down in the middle of her sentence.

Ned looked over to Stine and asked, "have you noticed that she's been very weird lately? Like I mean repeating stuff, voice speed, that stuff."

"Yes, I was thinking that too. Maybe we should run a diagnostic on it." Stine responded, looking away from the three fish in the aquarium.

Ned nodded, then made a motion for later, then turned back to the assembler, trying to find the engine category. He found one called, MK3 Fast Run Burn Engine, that only cost two titanium bars, two wiring kits, a bit of silver, a bit of lubricant. Ned tapped on it, and the lasers got to work, making one titanium bar and making one wiring kit. He turned to ask if Stine could help him collect what they needed, but he wasn't in the base.

Ned walked out after making sure he had what he needed, then went back down to the wreck with the extra tank loosely connected on a small piece of tubing. He grabbed everything he could, returning to the base with just a little bit more than what he needed. Ned put the resources in, then waited for the engine to be built.

The lasers stopped to cool off for the third time when Stine came back with a bit of resources, dropping them off.

"Wait Stine, you think you can help me get this engine in the Glider?"

Stine turned back to Ned, looking through the water. "I mean, sure."

They carried it back to the Glider, having to in the end push the Glider down closer to the sea floor. Stine helped Ned put the engine back, and put it back in place, making sure that it wouldn't move.

Stine then used the welder to go around and make sure it was fixed well, before they realized that about 20% of the white, blue and red paint had been removed, making it a bleak grey. They returned to the base, and Stine looked at the aquarium.

"Do we actually need this? I haven't seen any fish in here at all." Stine said to Ned, pointing at the glass.

"Now that you remind me, no. We should probably empty it and take it down." Ned said, tapping the drain button on the bottom of the hatch. It drained, then they deconstructed both the hatch and aquarium, making the room much easier to move around.

Ned sighed, "I suppose you want a new vehicle of your own soon."

Stine looked up from Ned's writings on his desk and shrugged. He looked back down and started to read again.

"I was thinking maybe something that is a bit bigger. Something similar to a design I particularly like," Ned said thoughtfully, looking at his own writing.

Stine looked up from the desk, "well, I mean what does it look like?"

Ned moved around Stine and sat down at his desk, grabbed some paper and the pen he got from a wreck, and drew a slanted glass front, with one room, a docking bay, and a engine room, with a few things labeled, and how much stuff was needed for it.

Stine looked at all of it, then nodded, saying, "I mean, it looks very useful for long times away from the base. But I had an idea in mind…"

"So you want us to just get radiation suits, and grab an exosuit from the Auror. From the burning ship- madness," Ned spoke, thinking what they would need for two radiation suits in the first place. "And- quiet, and it's not like there would be any exosuits left, if anything, we should go for the P.R.A.W.N suits."

"Prawn suits? Never heard of 'em." Stine said, shrugging.

"They… Personally I don't know if we should use them. Maybe the mark three, but not the mark four." Ned explained.

"But why?"

"They can have a few severe mental effects. Professional pilots take weeks of training just on controlling themselves." Ned replied.

"Aurora drive core loosing stability at a 80% increase. Chance of critical stability, 97%." Sydney blurted out.

"Estimated blast zone?" Stine asked Sydney.

"1.23 kilometers. You are out 1.31 kilometers out."

"Well back to what you are saying, let's give it a try. Though you'll have to get the fiber, lead, and glass." Ned said, getting up. "I'll get everything for the trip."

Stine nodded then set off, Ned following him. Ned set off with the Glider, heading back for the collapsed wreck, planning to rip off more salvage. Meanwhile Stine headed for the seaweed stuff, to get some plant fiber and lead.

A/N: Well. If you guys feel like this chapter was crap, tell me! But don't JUST do that, tell me what was bad.


	13. Aurora, and the Titanic

Stine found a decent chunk of lead, grabbed it, now trying to find the vines. Which wasn't hard, as all he had to do was go up and look around.

He swam up to a few creepvines and grabbed some seed pods, then cut off chunks of the dark green plantlife, taking it all back to the base.

Now that Stine looked at the "base", it didn't look like much. Just a small round room, a little bit of a foundation, and a few scratched solar panels. He swam around to the hatch, pressed the small button on the side to open it, swam in with the rushing water, then waited for the water to drain as the hatch swung shut. Stine opened the bulkhead, and moved through into the base.

Stine took off his oxygen mask, and found the bases air… Thick? He struggled to breath, and quickly put the mask back on. Stine checked the air around him with the small device on the side of the oxygen mask. It was thin, had some CO2 in it that could become lethal.

Stine muttered to himself, wishing Ned had put in some monitors that could actually tell these types of things. But, then again, they had only been away from the base for about two hours, which couldn't be enough for much to happen, it was like something managed to get in, bacteria, small animal?

Stine checked around a bit, when suddenly the lights shut off.

"Base power offline. Emergency power only. No emergency devices detected." Sydney said after the lights on the fabricator and assembler turned off, and the soft humming faded.

"Damn…"

Stine went back out after dumping a few things, and looked at the solar panels. They… Actually no. They didn't look like they would be working. But what about the power generator? Had it taken up the powercells?

Stine checked, and they were indeed 0%. He went back in and grabbed the last three powercells, coming out and quickly resurfacing. He returned to the generator and stuck them in, and heard the base start to hum again. He sat down at his desk after making sure everything was fine, and thought about what had happened. What actually happened in just the past Earth week or so. The Aurora, the ship he had helped command for seven years, the ship deemed the 'Ship that will never die', had crashed.

It reminded him of a case that even now was remarked on the weird impact it had, the Titanic. It was called the 'Unsinkable ship', and then, it sunk.

Stine heard the bulkhead unseal, and then close, limping footsteps clanging about upstairs.

"Ned?" Stine called up the ladder, getting up.

"Y-yeah?" Ned's voice stuttered, "Stine, it'd be a big help if you came up here."

Stine was already climbing the ladder, and once he got his shoulders above the top of the hole, he could see a small layer of water that had been accumulated after awhile, and little spills of red, coming from the open bulkhead, and leading to Ned's desk, where he was using some plant fiber to cover up a wound on his upper thigh.

"Yeah, I think we should move somewhere else before we go to the Aurora," Ned said, holding back tears, "we have enough things for another Glider, if we get some a little quartz, silver, and gold."

"Did one of the Stalkers get ya?" Stine said, helping pull the fiber tight around the wound.

"Yeah. Sydney's also busted, I tried getting a bit of an insta-fix, but didn't quite work." Ned said, pointing to his bed. "Here. Sydney, diagnostics on your AI."

"Processing… Processing… Proccess- Here are the diagnostics." Sydney reported, her voice going in and out of tone. "Chances of failure while proceeding in an insta-fix: 87.3%. Chances of complete AI information failure: 94.1%. Chances of a complete AI Core loss: 49.6%. Chances of fixing all 78 errors in AI Core: 21.6."

"Yeah. Do you want to try?" Ned asked, shrugging.

"If you're willing to try, I don't know much about Emergency Survival AI's. I'm pretty sure you guys were taught a feel things about them." Stine said, making sure the bandage was working.

Ned nodded, then bit his lip as the pain returned. He pointed towards his locker.

"There'll be a fe first aid kits in there on the bottom."

Stine went around and grabbed one, carrying it over to Ned.

"Okay, do you know anything about medical stuff?" Asked Ned.

Stine shook his head, so Ned grabbed the first aid kit, putting it on the desk, searching through it for certain things, taking off the fiber, showing a deep cut, not bad, but could get bad quickly.

Ned treated the possible infection quickly, then closed up the wound. He then put some red and white bandage on it, making sure it wasn't too tight, then cut it off from the roll, slipping it under, making sure the bandaging wouldn't fall apart, before putting everything back and closing the kit.

"Well, looks like our plan is going to be delayed a bit. Don't worry, there are some pills in there I can take, as you SHOULD, know, that will heal me up faster." Ned explained, shaking a large bottle of pink oval shaped pills.

Stine nodded, then spoke, "We might actually need some monitors in here to monitor the air pressure and make up, because when I got in here it wasn't very good."

Ned nodded, going to his writing, picking up the small recorder he got, and turning it on.

"The first log, of the two known survivors of the crashing, of the Aurora. Hello, I suppose, I'm Ned Goddan, one of the engineers on board, in the S section. There is also Stine, of which I do not know his last name. He was one of the main commanders. We are currently surviving as well as we could hope, although resources seem to be becoming a problem again. We have already made a Seamoth Glider." Ned turned it off, then put it down.

Ned sighed, tapping the bandages, wincing slightly. He leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. He didn't think that the Stalkers would become such a problem, but then again, they were predators for a very certain reason. Ned popped two and a half pills in his mouth, swallowed, then walked over the the bed, going to get some deserved sleep.

A/N: A short one, but I should get another one uploaded. Again, same as last time, if you didn't like it, tell me what was bad about it so I can improve.


	14. Exploration in the tunnels

Ned woke to Stine getting up downstairs, the noise echoing up into the room. Ned got off of the bed, stretching. He walked to the locker and grabbed a water bottle and salted Boomerang, carrying them to his desk. He ate a bit of the boomerang, looking at his notes of surrounding area on his PDA. Ned finished his breakfast as Stine was coming up for his.

"Hey, Stine?"

"Yeah Ned?" Stine groaned, grabbing a bottle of water.

"I want to explore. We do sit relatively safely on this cliff, but resources are extremely low, and fish seem to be getting used to getting away from us." Ned explained, "I'm thinking, we go and explore a bit after getting radiation suits, then maybe in two, three days we come back and drop off everything then go for the Aurora."

Stine sighed, thinking, "I… Suppose. That even puts at us an advantage when we get to the Aurora. Ok, let me eat and get ready first."

Stone grabbed a fish then went down to his room to get ready. Ned was already ready, so he just went to the Seamoth Glider to make sure everything was ready.

"Two powercells… Four days of food and water… Emergency equipment…" Ned muttered to himself as he checked the Glider.

The hatch opened up and Stine climbed in through the gel sheet and settled himself in the back, waiting for Ned to drive.

They set off to explore, with both their radiation suits on.

"Here, here Ned!" Stine spoke as they passed a large cave opening inside a huge valley.

Ned stopped the Glider and headed in, turning on the lights. Ned eyed the narrowing walls of the cave, until they found the tunnel and only big enough for them.

"Well, get out, the Glider ain't going any further," Ned stopped in front of the sudden narrowing of the tunnel then got out, waiting for Stine.

The went into the tunnel, using the walls of it to propel them through the tunnel. Ned anxiously counted his oxygen supplies.

One minute and sixteen seconds… One minute and fifteen seconds… One minute and…

The tunnel widened up a bit, only to branch off into many different directions. Ned looked at Stine, seeing him poorly gesturing something. Now Ned saw the importance of un-AI-assisted suit comms.

Ned pointed down a tunnel, then Stine, gesturing him to go down that one. Stine understood, moving past him down it. Ned sighed, then moved down a different tunnel.

Fifty-three seconds…

Fifty-two seconds…

Fifty-one seconds…

Fifty seconds…

Ned planned to retreat at forty-five seconds, but instead of being risky, he went back then, marking the tunnel he went down, and the one Stine went down.

Ned climbed in the Glider, taking off the mask. He breathed the filtered air for a bit then he put back on his oxygen mask, getting out and immediately going down the tunnel, then going down his hole. He got a lot deeper, getting into a large clearing with a powered submarine in it and a small base under it. Ned quickly went into the submarine, quickly looking over the hull, seeing lots of plants and purple things growing on it.

Ned sealed the hatch, then waited for it to depressurize, willing it to go fast, as he only had ten seconds left of oxygen.

It didn't suck the water out so Ned just opened up the bulkhead, hoping he didn't make the wrong decision in going for the submarine. At least, he tried to open the bulkhead, but instead it was stuck, sealed.

Ned jiggled the lever, willing it to move. He started to bang rapidly on the door, trying to break it. His body started to feel heavy, and with one last kick, the lever suddenly jiggled loose, sliding a bit.

Ned seized it and slid it down all the way, pushing the door open, taking off his mask and breathing in whatever might be in the submarine.

He got a mouthful of water, and he spat it out, breathing again, pushed by the rushing water from the airlock. This time he got air, but he felt so weak, so tired. He fell down into the pooled water, and fainted.

Ned awoke, instantly getting a coughing fit, moving a bit. His lights had turned off, and only a flickering bulb covered in grim lit the long room, full of lockers.

Ned tried to turn his lights on, only to find the batteries were drained. He sighed, then thought about why the hell would there be a submarine and a base set up after a long tunnel?

Ned decided that he had quite a few pressing matters to deal with. One such as what was the state of the submarine, and could they salvage it? Ned used to slanted wall to get back to his feet, then he trudged through large water that had gotten in somehow. I mean, the water that was in the airlock wasn't nearly a quarter of what was on the floor.

Ned sniffed the air, and instead of smelling the clean, filtered air, devoid of smell, the air was stuffy, had the faint smell of decay and rusted metal, and and a very stale, old taste to it, as if it had been sitting in the submarine for years. Ned coughed, the decaying smell repulsive, even if it was faint.

He spotted a ladder in the dim light, and moved over to that, wanting to explore the submarine. He unsealed the hatch and water started to leak through. Ned tried to push the hatch back, but the water pushed down harder, and Ned was pushed back onto the ground as the flurry of water came through the hatch, overwhelming Ned.

He swam up to the top, closing his eyes, trying to spit the water out, panicking. Ned got the the top of the water, where there was only a few inches of air above his head. He grabbed the ladder, breathing in the air, coughing. Ned climbed up the ladder and looked around.

There was a few lockers bolted onto the wall, but evidently some had been ripped off by something, the doors smashed. A variety of item were strewn around on the floor, one taking his attention. It was a small, what looked like steel box, with a gem on the top.

Ned climbed up all the way, and swung the hatch up, sealing it. Ned picked up the box, looking at it, wondering what made his eyes snap to it. The box had hinges, but it had no lock in the front, however it wouldn't open. No matter how hard Ned tried to open it, no matter how many different ways he tried to open it, the lid stayed tight.

Ned gave up and stashed it, planning to try opening it later. He put his hands under one of the lockers and picked it up, finding it full of decaying food, the decaying smell suddenly overwhelming him. Ned coughed, his nose starting to get runny. He hated allergies, and of course, near all types of molds was exactly what he was allergic to.

Ned backed up after dropping the locker and tripped over another locker, falling right onto the glass doors of it, the loud noise of glass rung out, and Ned yelped in pain. Ned quickly lifted himself out of the glass, whimpering slightly.

Ned heard it. Ned heard the small, clanking noise, almost the same sound of a rattlesnake. Although, more slow, more… Hostile?

Ned looked around, and in the low light, he could just make out some sort of four-legged creature with it's spine pushing the skin up. Ned quickly moved back, grabbing for some sort of weapon, as he didn't like how it slowly stalked him, gripping onto random things on the walls.

Ned picked up a broken solid metal bar, the top of it twisted a bit. He wielded it at the thing as it came closer and closer. He backed away from it, looking down occasionally to make sure he wasn't about to trip on anything. Ned looked down again, just as he heard a sudden loud noise from the creature, and as he looked up it was already upon him, slamming him to the ground.

Ned closed his eyes, the fall causing a ringing in his ears. He focused on the thing on top of him, using the bar to stop it from biting off his head. It almost seemed like it was playing with him, obviously it could break the weak bar and shred him, but instead it acted like it couldn't manage to actually get him. Just as he thought this, the bar broke and in lunged for his head.

Ned rolled to the side just in time, instead of his head it bit at a piece of the bar it broke. It kept it in it's mouth, facing him. Suddenly it flung the bar at him, but it missed, the bar piercing the submarine wall, embedding itself in the wall. Ned glanced over at it as in flung by, and suddenly he was pushed back on the floor, this time no bar to protect himself.

Ned panicked, adrenaline making time seem to go faster. It bit at him and Ned moved his head, so instead it got his shoulder, the pain making Ned yell. But the creature didn't stop, it bit down harder, ignoring Ned's frantic attempts to get it away.

Ned looked around, looking for something to help him. He spotted a locker right next to him, so he clenched his hand into a fist, smashing the glass of the locker, ignoring the cuts it gave him, and grabbed the biggest piece of glass he saw, and smashed it into the creature's back.

It yelped, jumping off of Ned, the glass still stuck in it's back. Ned clutched his shoulder, grabbing another piece of glass, and throwing it at the thing. It moved out of the way, then slipped on a piece of glass. Ned grabbed another bit of glass and threw it at the thing, this time it hit, shattering on the thing's skin. Ned pulled one of the intact doors off of the locker and held onto it, waiting for the thing to pounce again.

It did pounce once more, and so Ned smashed the entire glass door onto it's head, causing it to stop just barely long enough for Ned to quickly shove the bit of glass he had stabbed it with earlier farther in. It retaliated by biting down on his arm and twisting its head side to side, dragging Ned across the floor.

Ned kept punching it's eye, trying to get it to let go. It just squinted and slammed him down into a locker instead.

Ned yelled in agony, and in a last ditch effort to get this thing away from him he scrambled up and grabbed a locker from the ground and threw it at the thing. It took it to the face, expecting it to be light, but it flung it off of it's feet into the wall. Ned grabbed the lever of the bulkhead on his side of the room and pulled it down opening it, hoping the thing was stunned still. He pulled the thing open with a small _pop!_ Just at the thing leaped at him.

Ned quickly stepped into the room and slammed the bulkhead shut, sealing it, seeing the the thing scratch at the glass porthole. Ned observed it for just a moment to see if it could open it up, then slumped down against the bulkhead, gripping his shoulder.

Ned ached, feeling as if a truck had just hit him, following that up by running him over. He breathed in, trying to calm down, trying to think clearly. He looked around the room he was now in, glad to find it well lit. It was much more tidy, the locker properly attached to the wall, and there was even a small cube thing with curved corners, and a fabricator.

There was what looked like a bed for… Maybe a dog? Cat? Who knows. Ned used the sheet as bandages by ripping it into strips, putting on all of it on his wounded shoulder and arm to slow the bleeding.

Ned now had time to go through the lockers to maybe find some medical supplies. He spotted a small stack of first-aid kits, opened the door and grabbed two. He sat down on the bed and removed the temporary bandaging, then put on some gel to seal the wound completely, then rolled it up and a thick layer of bandaging, then addressed the small cuts on his bottom and fist with band-aids, though he had to use the tweezers in the kit to pull out a few shards of glass. Ned sighed, then grabbed a blanket that had been shoved in the corner of the bed and covered himself in it, falling asleep, knowing that the creature couldn't get through a bulkhead in the amount of time Ned would probably be sleeping for.

 **A/N: Well I hoped you enjoyed the chapter, and for those of you who were waiting for this, I am sorry, school has been giving me the middle finger (and so have my parents, figuratively and literally), and I've rarely had time to write.**

 **So while I will be working as hard as I can on this, I do have my own life to live.**

 **Have a great day, ya'll.**


	15. The Aurora

Ned awoke, his stomach growling. He got up, moving over to the lockers, are a small breakfast, then sat down at his desk.

Ned could hear the light snores of Stine, signaling he was still asleep. Ned thought about what they had recently found.

I mean, the steel box could just be something of the previous owner's to the base, but the glowing module?

Very odd. It wasn't a power source, it never changed temperature within four degrees of 127 degrees fahrenheit. It was kinda a blood red glow, which was only supposed to occur in temperatures around 1075 degrees.

An electric device maybe? Powered to give off heat and light? That seemed more realistic, than thinking some sort alien metal or artifact.

Ned looked at his PDA, which he had left on his desk. He turned it on, showing a sketch of the P.R.A.W.N suits they were going to go after. At least supposed to.

They had radiation suits ready, water, food, power, and everything Ned and Stine could think of covered, they just hadn't actually done it.

Ned considered that, if they did go, the radiation suits would be pushed to their limits. And, even one slip up, one hole in the suit, sand one of them would be dead faster than "help" is said.

Ned sighed, then headed downstairs? Downlatters? To wake Stine and see what he thought.

"Stine, wake up." Ned said, shaking Stine lightly.

"Oi! Stine!" Ned said, vigorously shaking him.

"STINE!" Ned yelled, violently pulling Stine off his bed.

"Ouch! Whaaaaa- aaaat?" Stine groaned as he yawned, stretching his words.

Ned tapped him with his flipper equipped foot. "Get up!"

Stine pushed himself to his feet, facing Ned.

"What?" Stine snapped.

"Do you want to go to the Aurora? I mean, we have everything we need." Ned said, stepping back a bit.

Stine shrugged. "I guess. Got not too much else to do, here's a checklist, you go through it, I'll grab my tools." Stine explained, giving Ned his PDA.

Ned nodded, then wen back up, going through each item. Stine's list had left out an extra powercell, but he had everything they would need, in any scenario that Ned could think of.

Ned turned to see Stine moving up the stairs, a water bottle in hand.

"We have everything, I'm just going to add an extra powercell." Ned informed Stine.

"I mean… How heavy is a powercell?" Stine said, tilting his jaw into a concerned position.

"Only near six pounds. Six and a half, I would think."

Stine nodded, saying, "I mean, that leaves a little over a pound of extra weight we can carry. Here." Stine grabbed his PDA, messing around a bit. "We don't need quite as much food, there should be some aboard the Aurora. That gets it to seven pounds or so of extra weight. That sounds good."

Ned nodded, "Let us load up the Glider!"

They finally got the last battery loaded, then they started off directly towards the Aurora.

They got near it very quickly, the Aurora smack in the middle of a huge sandbar. There were creatures everywhere, their own shout echoing through the water.

The two tried to find a hole in the Aurora, the only hole they could find only went in three meters into the hull.

"Damn this thing is damn good. I bet it's still pressurized in there." Stine said.

"No. The bridge broke off, same with a piece of the front. Parts of it, sure. But the hull is sunk into the sandbar, it's probably completely cracked on the underside." Ned denied his statement, slowly turning sharply around the edge of the engines of the Aurora.

"I think I see a hole, just near that cut in." Stine told Ned, pointing at it.

Ned nodded, heading towards it. They reached it, the hole going in a bit, then it got smaller, so they had to leave the Glider behind, going in. Stine held onto Ned as they zoomed through with the Seaglider.

They quickly reached the lower engine room, it completely flooded apart from a small piece, leaving only a meter of air.

"I'm pretty sure this is where the ocean surface is outside, so that means we're good for now." Stine said, lifting his mask slightly.

Ned nodded, then they dived back down, searching for a door. There was on, but it was jammed with a piece of titanium steel mix, and under the water entirely.

Their combined efforts did it though, the door motors breaking with a click, the doors sliding back.

They went through, the hall mostly filled with pressurized air. They got to the point in the hall where the water got shallow, allowing them to walk.

Stine kept stumbling, as he had spent way more time just swimming that Ned. Ned only tripped over his flippers twice, his legs used to either walking or in the standing position.

They got to an intersection, one way blocked.

"Which one?" Stine asked.

Ned tried to remember anything about the Aurora, thinking only straight would lead to the engine rooms elevator.

"Oh, yeah. Do you have your tracker on?" Ned asked, moving forwards, going through the slightly closed doors.

"Yeah, turned it on once we got in."

They moved along the halls, a door coming up every now and then. The Aurora's insides were surprisingly intact, just a few things strewn about, some plating cast onto the floor.

Soon the two found what they were looking for. A storage room, that had a cargo lift in the back. They looted what little was intact, then Ned tried to call the lift.

There was aloud crash from above, then rattling, soon the lift came into view. The lift doors opened, but one stayed closed, presumably broken.

"W-wha-at-t floor?" The ship's many AI's spoke to them, glitching out.

"Floor 3!" Ned yelled.

The doors closed, the broken one bouncing back, then the lift started to go up. The smell of smoke started to become apparent, and their eyes started to sting, the lift filling with smoke. The lift finally came to a stop, the smell of smoke, and the smell of oil clashed horribly.

They stepped out to see one of the four engine rooms ablaze, smoke clouding their view of anything else.

"Just turn on your radiation helmet filter!" Stine yelled over the thunderous the blaze, melting metals dripping down.

Ned did so, and they stared in disbelief. They quickly got back into the lift, not wanting to stay for long.

"We should probably keep the filter on just in case!" Ned yelled through his filter.

Stine nodded, then yelled to the AI, "Floor 1!"

The lift doors closed, the lift shuddering, then started down.

"Oh wait we forgot to check what was behind us." Ned told Stine.

"We'll have to do it down here now, pray for little water." Stine shrugged.

The lift stopped, and they looked in it now. There was a bit of water, and the engine was steaming, apparently still hot.

Stine beckoned Ned down the catwalk stairs, moving down it, the air getting hotter and hotter as they went down.

 _Snap!_

Stine's leg went straight through one of the stairs, causing him to fall onto the stairs.

"Ned!" Ned shouted, rushing down, helming him up.

Ned put one of Stine's arm around his neck, helping him walk down each stair, checking each one, two more breaking, without harming the two.

They got to the bottom, where Ned laid Stine down.

"Are you okay? Just a cut or is it worse?"

"Worse. I can feel the metal in my leg, I'm damn sure it's bad." Stine retorted in pain.

Ned got out his medkit, taking out the medical tweezers, looking for the metal. He ripped the environment suit off around it, got it all away, seeing a large cut, all of them deep, two pieces of metal in Stine's leg. Stine's breathing was fast and deep, quite obviously in deep pain.

Ned slowly and carefully guided the first, small piece of metal out, it clattering upon the floor. Ned did the same with the other, then he did his best at stitching all while Stine twitched occasionally, and with no painkillers to suppress him, it was surprising just how still Stine actually was.

It was stitched up so Ned took the roll of medical bandages and covered it tightly, making sure that if Stine bled, it wouldn't be much.

"Feeling better?" Ned asked, grabbing an small 12 hour pain reliever in the kit, that only starts after quarter hour.

"No. Worse after your stitching job. Glad I own nothing you will ever knit." Stine retorted.

"Well if you eat this, you'll feel better in about ten minutes. Also, you own your leg, don't you?" Ned told him putting the pill on his stomach.

"Yeah, but that was stitching, not knitting."

Ned waited for him to take it, then he lifted him up.

"Do you want to go back, or can you walk by yourself? I won't be able to carry you for long." Ned said, heaving Ned all the way to his feet.

"I got it, thanks though, can feel the pain killers kicking in already." Stine told him.

Ned knew it was a lie, at least about the pain killers, but went with it.

They looked around a tiny bit to see if coming down was even worth it, only to find nothing salvageable or even in some sort of container. They went back up, hurrying to the lift, going up to the final floor, there there was a long corridor through the entire ship, with lifts on the sides.

They soon got to it, and started to move down it, passing the occasion mess, until they found a large beam breaking through the plating, bits of pipes a wires blocking the rest of the space.

"Well, let's pick a lift, I suppose, I think we should check out the drive. The suits should take it." Stine said, pointing to the two lifts that would take them down to the drive room.

They soon appeared into the room, smoke filling part of the room, bits of the ceiling fallen down, fire in patches around, half the core room underwater.

"WARNING. MAXIMUM RADIATION LEVEL REACHED. WARNING." The small computer in the suits told us.

The room was loud, not nearly as loud as the engine room, but still loud, the fire crackling, wires hissing, and loud beeps and alarms ringing through the room. Stine pointed to the central control piece, and Ned nodded. They moved around to it. However, the catwalk had been taken out at pieces, some bit even underwater.

Ned got to the console first, which he thought was a good thing. The modules had been knocked out, two on the floor, one smashed, the other for the Seamoth, and the one still barely in the console was for the Cyclops. The console was smashed up way too much, but it said, 'No Connection' then, in little tiny letters it said 'Aurora Black Box not found'.

Stine came up behind Ned and read it.

"What is the 'Aurora Black Box'?" Stine asked.

"It's… It is a device, records all the logs for backup. It's located just near the bridge section, but the piece that it's in should still be on the ship… Weird, maybe we can try to connect to it ourselves." Ned explained.

"Sure, go ahead."

Ned messed with his suit, then looked at a small panel on his arm. His face changed to straight, to surprised.

"Weak signal, but we got it." Ned told Stine.

"Checking the logs… Hull failure… Engine blowout… Crash… And- Oh! It just locked me out. But how would it register me as a hacker, or intruder?" Ned wondered out loud.

"I mean, the connection could've been lost." Stine suggested.

"No, no. It definitely logged me out, and I was just about to get to a file named 'Object'. I'll try to get in."

There was a long silence, Stine starting to get bored, then Ned spoke, "Got in, but it'll kick me out again… The file is just coordinates, and a audio clip. I downloaded it, and there, it permanently disconnected from my suit."

"Play the clip." Stine asked.

Ned played it, and a humming noise was heard, then a sudden increase in the volume, a loud blast, then it stopped.

Stine and Ned looked at each other.

"Do you reckon?" Stine asked.

"I don't know… It seems odd. Why would the Aurora be recording the surface in the first place? And why, if it had a reason, why the very specific coords of the thing that took us down? Just-"

"Containment failure in the Drive Generators detected. Radiation levels over tolerable levels. Half kilometer distance required for safe radiation levels to return." The AI informed us.

Stine pointed to the lift, and they bolted towards it. Ned nearly fell, but they both made it, quickly making the lift go up, not waiting for the grated doors of the lift to fully open, and bolted down the hall.

"If there is a containment failure, the ship is dangerous, not just because the radiation, but the explosion that is bound to happen!" Ned yelled to Stine, trying to urge him to go faster.

They made it to the lift they had used to get to the hall, and soon they were swimming again, heading straight for the hole they had come in through. Just moments after they had gotten into the Seamoth Glider, the AI warned them of a unavoidable explosion, the safe distance was near a kilometer. They sped off, being informed it would happen in only a minute or so.

Ned didn't know where he was going. All he knew was that he was moving away from danger.

"Warning. Critical breakdown of Drive Core. Explosion in -T7, -T6, -T5, -T4, -T3, -T2-" The AI told us, but on the last few words, it was interrupted by a loud noise, then suddenly the Glider went tumbling, hitting multiple rocks.

Ned and Stine were thrown around, then, in a sudden, quick jerk of the Glider, the glass smashed.

Water flooded the Glider, and Ned was flung out, along with many objects that weren't in the locker, which was locked. Stine held on for dear life, quickly sealing his suit. The Glider's emergency floaters popped out the bottom, lifting the vehicle up.

The explosion was over, and the water calmed down. However, the Glider was now a crumpled bit of metal, the controls still worked, so Stine got in the seat, and used the engine to slowly push him, only half the propeller in the water. Stine was just heading back to the base, hoping Ned had started to move there.

Stine was tired, and eventually, the low humming of the engine and the small splashing becoming a lullaby after that.

 **A/N: I hope this extra one will make the long wait & the short chapter better! It's still short, but at least when they're combined, they're decently long. I will have to thank afrogunsou932fluffeh** **, for the criticism! I tried to fix whatever I saw, but I mean, :/**

 **Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I owe it to you guys!**


	16. The Aftermath

Ned tried to grab anything, anything to stop him from being sucked out into the cold, rushing waters. Ned got a grip on the edge of what used to be the front glass pane, cutting his suit, the glass breaking off. Ned tumbled out, feeling as though every part of him was being punched, the puncher wearing brass knuckles.

Ned hit a rock outcropping. He had smashed into it with such force, it broke, but Ned was sure his shoulder blade had done the same. The water started to become calmer, allowing Ned to grab onto something. It was another rock, and it had stopped him.

He hid behind it, waiting for the current to slow even further. It slowly, gradually got slower, until it just suddenly stopped. Ned quickly swam as fast as he could up to the surface.

"Five percent of air left in the tanks. Re-surfacing recommended." The AI told Ned.

Ned broke the surface with only 1% left, taking off his mask. He breathed in and out, trying to soothe his pain. After a while, he was feeling just slightly better, so he started for the base, hoping it was still intact.

Ned had to take seven breaks already, and was not even quite there. Still about two hundred meters to go. He kept swimming this time, whereas he would've stopped after a hundred meters.

Ned soon came to a point where he could see the base, and looked at it.

It… Had been destroyed. A wall had caved in, the roof tilted heavily. The generator had been ripped to pieces, the solar panels gone, apart from small pieces and fragments.

The oxygen and depressurizing systems was intact, however. Ned salvaged what he could carry, then continued on, hoping Stine was okay, seeing as Ned hadn't seen Stine in a while.

Ned didn't know what to do. With no pod, no base, no fabricator, he was at a lost. He had a builder, but nothing to really build with. And, with a broken shoulder blade, he couldn't really explore, so Ned resorted to floating on top of the surface, keeping his mask on, waiting for anything to happen, maybe Stine would come back with the Glider! He didn't know.

Fortunately, something DID happen, and fast. There was a soft humming, and distant splashing, loud enough to catch Ned's attention. He scanned the horizon, seeing some metal thing with dark blue coloring in it, and orange things on the bottom on the metal object.

Ned squinted, trying to see better. He could just barely make out… The Glider! The orange bits was the emergency floaters, and the blue stuff was Stine! Ned started swimming, maybe not as fast as he could, but he just wanted to get to Stine.

Ned resurfaced, and now the Glider was just right in front of him. Stine, was dozing off, so much so, he couldn't see Ned.

"STINE!" Ned yelled, doing the backstroke to keep up with the Glider.

Stine jumped, then looked at Ned.

"Ned!" Stine stopped the Glider, and lifted him up into the Glider.

"Be careful, my shoulder is probably broken. How's the Glider, and yourself?" asked Ned.

"The Glider, is beaten. It won't be seeing much more use, sad as I am to say it. I'm fine, just sleepy." Stine told him, letting him in the driver's seat.

"Ok. Do you have anything on you?" Ned asked, sitting down and making sure the engine was off.

"Ummm…. Yes, my builder, a knife, a battery, a water bottle, and a bit of titanium. Why?"

"We ain't going back to the base, for a long time. It got destroyed pretty damn well by the wave that went through the water." Ned told Stine, starting the engine, and starting to move the Glider forwards. "That, and radiation will have covered a lot of this area, the explosion weakened the containment strength, along with destroying most of the shield for the drive room."

Stine nodded, relaxing in the back.

"So, just go forwards, until it looks good?" Ned asked.

"Suppose."

A long, long drive. Or what felt like a long drive. Soon it was day, and they had found a pretty nice spot. It was near where Ned's pod was, just a kilometer further away from the Aurora.

Soon, the new base had a hatch, and two solar panels, a generator impossible to make at the current moment. They had managed to scrap enough wiring and a computer chip from what Ned grabbed to make a fabricator, and off of that they got tempature control in the base, and Stine's separate room.

"Well, I don't know how to break it to you, Stine." Ned said, looking at his PDA. "There just isn't enough power. Each solar panel has a storage capability of twenty-five kilowatts, and that's only fifty kilowatts."

"So? It's not like we can't just let up on the fabricator during the night." Stine argued.

"We would have to do that, but even then, keeping the temperature in here a decent temperature will take power, the oxygen flow will take power, and depressurizing when needs could take power sometimes. Now, there is about sixty-five kilowatts extra on average, which only one powercell could easily hold. Either that, or we hunt for the resources for about two more extra solar panels." Ned told Stine bluntly. "There's not much of a way to ignore it."

"How would we wire the powercell up anyways?" Stine asked genuinely.

"Well, all we would need is about four pounds of copper, half a pound of silver, and we can make enough wire to hook up from-" Ned said, getting up and walking over to the wall, and ripping off a piece, showing a few outlets. "-this bit. I mean, it's meant for emergency recharges of your PDA, or really anything that needs to be recharged."

"Fine, there's everything you'll need in the locker of the Seamoth Glider." Stine said, giving up.

Ned looked overjoyed, and hurried out. Ned got the wire, easily hooked it up, grabbed the only powercell they had gotten from the Aurora visit. Ned had to pry off the top plate to get to the small plug. Ned got the powercell hooked up, then turned on the outlet.

Another soft hum came from the base, and Ned waited. Waited for it to maybe catch on fire, as he didn't know how much power the power box could handle, or how much power the wire could handle. It was night, so the powercell would be transferring its power into the base systems.

Ned put his hands up, happy at his success. Stine was already in his room, so sadly Ned couldn't share his success. He figured it was time for him to go to bed, making sure to lay on his right side, not his left.

His shoulder had already been taken care of for the most part, from the use of a first aid kit, it had been mended in only a Earth time day. So, after that horrible loss, it looked like Ned and Stine could bounce back.

 **A/N: A little quick one for ya guys, just because I'm probably going to be putting up a lot of christmas decor in the house, so I might not be able to get a chapter out quite as soon as I hoped. Hope this little chapter and those others will do you guys.**


	17. Power Problems

Ned couldn't sleep. There was the constant rising and falling hum from the power box, the temperature wasn't quite right, and it was humid in the base. And on top of all of that, Stine had developed somewhat of a loud snore.

Ned got up, tired of just laying there, and moved over to his desk in the very dim lighting of the shut down base. He sat down and looked at their blueprints, and listened to his first log. Why not make another? Been a bit.

Ned clicked the record button, then waited for a moment.

"Ned here. We've both got our lives still. After my first log, I think nothing too important happened, apart from what I want to talk about." Ned sighed, wondering how to word it all. "Well, we decided that we could and probably should make our way into the Aurora, forgetting about how unstable it was. While we were poking about, the drives malfunctioned. Like, completely. I don't know what triggered it, because it seemed pretty stable, the containment. They were all fully intact, no serious wiring problems either. The Black Box… It was odd. When I connected to it, I went through a few things, then found a file, and as soon as I did it kicked me out. I got back in long enough to download the file, which contained a bad picture, and a audio track. After listening to the audio track, me and Stine both agree that it was, quite oddly, a space-to-planet recording, of the exact gun that shot the Aurora down from orbit." Ned turned off the log, and sighed again.

There wasn't anything Ned and Stine could do but collect resources, to try and recover from the hit they took. Ned didn't know how lucky they were, but he knew they were damn lucky to still be living. But, what they really needed to do is explore further, better places to live, better places to get resources.

Ned sat there for a moment, went back to bed, pulling the sheet of metal over the opening.

"Ned! Fire! Fire! Ned!" Ned slowly opened his eyes, greeted by darkness.

He thought Stine was calling him, but Ned was too tired to focus on it.

"NED! FUCKING FIRE!"

Ned grabbed the handle for the cover, and yanked it open. There was a large fire near the powercell, smoke completely filling the room. Ned slid out of bed and quickly looked around.

Stine was trapped in his room, as the fire had engulfed his little hole. With no fire extinguishers and no other way of getting the fire out, Ned scrambled to the airlock, and that's when it came to him. He could simply override the airlock, and let a couple pounds of water in.

Ned unsealed the bulkhead, and leaving it open, he pulled the cover off the small override switch off and flipped it.

The hatch swung outwards, and water flooded in. Ned quickly flipped the switch again, and the alarm started to go off. Ned quickly pulled the hatch shut and slid the lock into place.

Ned turned to see if it had worked. The floor was steaming, the smoke hadn't quite cleared, and the powercell was sparking. But it was done.

"Quite the eventful morning." Ned called down to Stine.

The water drained, the smoke cleared, and the powercell taken care of.

"The power box is gone, we can't use it again. I think I just didn't think about what would happen if the powercell was full, and the storage was full. It probably continued transferring power to the powercell, causing the box to fry itself, and the powercell to explode." Ned said, looking at the box. "At least, that's my theory."

Stine nodded, then left the base, wanting to get back on track, maybe find a better place to set up. He searched and searched, but found nothing, but a bit of titanium, silver, and copper. Stine kept looking through the dark, wanting to explore further. He wasn't very successful, until he found a very small crack in the wall of rock, about ten meters down. Stine slowly squeezed in, trying to be as flat as possible, just barely fitting with his tanks. The crack widened a little bit, enough for Stine to swim as normal. Stine shone his lights as far as he could, the water seeming to get thicker, more little bits that the light illuminated, and the range shortened.

Stine had to return twice, soon finding the point where he couldn't go any further, and sadly he hadn't found anything. Stine reluctantly moved away, started toward the base, as it was nearly the third day, meaning it had been near fourteen hours, which Ned had made it clear they needed to be in the base after fourteen hours, as there would only be ten hours left to their "day" to sleep and eat. Stine passed by the fields, then, into the kelp.

Stine unsealed the bulkhead, pushing it forwards. Ned had fallen asleep, his PDA shining into the dim room, scorched and warped. Stine sighed, and climbed down the ladder. He sniffed, the air freezing down in his room. The light hadn't turned on for some reason, and the lava lamp on his desk was off, casting the room into darkness. Stine turned on the lava lamp, dimly illuminating the room, throwing light upon the scribbles and scratches on the wall, created by Stine. Stine went over to the light in his room, finding that it had burnt out.

Stine sighed, and made another bulb in the fabricator, using the glass and copper he had gotten during his journeys. Stine took out the old bulb, threw it in the trash corner, and installed the new one. Stine turned it on, then moved to the drawings on the wall. Stine looked at him, thinking.

The scribbles, weren't scribbles- but strips of writing, bits of math, science, and even some diagrams. They formed some sort of analogy on a single photo, a waterlogged, blurry photo. The photo was taken up nearly entirely of the Aurora crashing, the photo, marked at the bottom, was taken from a research station that had been orbiting planet 4546B, the planet that Stine and Ned knew they were on.

Stine picked up his knife, then grabbed the map that he had found in the Auora. He started carving the bridge, then once he got to the top, he put the map down, the hands working around, creating a nice, clean, perfect copy, though he was just using his memory of being in it. Soon Stine was done, and he had grown tired, after all, he had been swimming all day. He put the knife down, climbing into bed, lying down.

 **A/N: Merry Christmas! Or I mean, whatever you might celebrate this time of year. I've got a trip planned for the next few days too, and I won't be able to write at all. So, Happy New Year too! I've got to go back to school January 4th, so I also won't be able to write nearly as fast as I wish I could. Have a great day everybody.**


	18. At Last

Ned woke, one side of his face smushed up against the desk. The same side of his face was wet with drool. Ned picked his face up and cleaned up his saliva, then looked back at what he had done last night. It was just a scan of the glowing cylinder, as Ned had scavenged it yesterday. The scan was still going. 89% done. Ned sighed, moving over to the stack of filled water bottles he had made yesterday. He grabbed one and took a swig from it.

Ned set it down and decided to move to something else. Fixing Sydney. He was pretty much half done. Just would have to fix a small code error in the speech folder, and recover the memory, and install another terabyte of memory. Ned continued working on Sydney, occasionally checking the scan. Soon Ned had the speech done. It was pretty easy, the code had been lazily deleted, easily found, then put back in the right section.

92%. 95%. 97%. 99%.

Then, the PDA warned of low battery. Ned quickly plugged it in, but the charger wasn't working. The PDA read:

Scan results unusual. Power source detected.

But Ned only managed to read to the second sentence before the PDA turned off. He quickly grabbed the charger, unplugged it, grabbed Stine's, and plugged it in. After a few seconds, the PDA lit up, booting up again, then coming to the scan results again.

Unknown substances detected. Language detected. The cylinder contains containment levels, such that are stronger than the best containment known to mankind. Explosive properties detected, power possibly coming from this. Cylinder most likely used as a key component in an alien engine, created off-world. Further scans required for better results.

Ned tapped the rescan button, seeing the estimated time at thirty hours. He sighed, deciding he had gotten enough sleep waiting for the last scan, so he might as well gather more resources. Ned groaned as he got up, stretching, happy with his results so far. He made sure he had what he would need, then went out. He was heading for the old base, to see if he could grab much more.

Turns out there was a bit more to salvage, without using much effort at least. Ned hauled a large piece of metal slowly to the base, just barely managing to get it through the hatch and into the main room. The fabricator refined it into titanium, which Ned put into the shared resource locker, finding three rolls of silicone rubber.

Ned got an idea, grabbing two rolls, copper wire, and a small piece of copper. He put all of it on the fabricator, making a power cord, which would be used for the next thing to be made. Ned reached into all of the lockers to bring up enough resources to make a new power box, replacing the fried one, then made a planet-to-near-space communicator, put it up on the wall, connecting it to a quarter empty powercell, making sure everything was secure, and correctly wired, then turned the communicator on.

The lights flickered, then turned off as it drawed nearly all the power from the base. Ned waited, then power was restored, the fans turning on before the lights, then the communicator screen blinked into life, the power box and the communicator humming intensely. The red light blinked, indicating a message had come in. Ned held down the play button, listening.

"The date is… Well, no idea, but it's been two months or so on-planet days since the, *cough* crash. To all the survivors out there, it wasn't a simple malfunction. The… Aurora was shot down, by some sort of laser. To every rescue ship coming within fifty kilometers from this planet, once you enter the atmosphere, YOU WILL BE SHOT DOWN. I don't know where this gun is, I don't know how big it is, I don't know what it is capable of, but luckily, I know it's range. And, to anybody who is capable of fast travel, I… Need help. There is one other with me. We landed seven miles away, and the only sight of any chance of a survivor was, well, ripped away from us, as all we saw was a pod, a pod distress signal, before we went in different directions. I would estimate it landed close to the Aurora, maybe ten or so kilometers away. This was the first log of Steven Effin. Over, and… Out."

Ned stared at the communicator for a moment, be fore realising the light was blinking again. He tapped the play button once again.

"Log two, I suppose. Date, nearly three months based on on-planet days, which I think are half as long as on Earth standard. Our pod has drifted another three kilometers from the Aurora. An interesting thing happened to the Aurora. It blew up. I found out that the Aurora gave out a small signal just a few seconds before it went, talking about two known survivors, and that anybody who came to try and rescue us would well, end up like us. I don't know how these two survivors came across such info, but congrats. But, now we really need help. I will give you coordinates to our location, or our location in about two earth days. The coords should be displayed upon the screen. Write them down. Godspeed."

Ned sighed, three pod distress signals came through, two text messages about things breaking into people's pods, then the messages stopped. Ned knew what he was going to do. He went down and woke Stine, telling him why they had to find resources that instant to make a new Glider. They both headed out, clearing out the area round them, managing enough resources for both a vehicle fabricator, and the Glider itself. The trip itself would take near fifteen hours, so they quickly shoved everything into the Glider, didn't even check the weight, then sped off to the coords.

Ned's eyes was starting to drift off, Stine snoring in the back, surrounded by water bottles and contained food. Ned's head was tilted, only one hand on the controls. The lights lighting about only about thirty or so meters forwards, the Glider going near ten per second, the swishing about the windshield so fast, cutting the visibility in half.

Ned closed his eyes, falling into the abyss of sleep. He was jerked awake by the Glider jerking from the path, downwards from the speed, continuing down. Ned grabbed the controls, pulling up as hard as he could, but the water was pushing so hard, the Glider barely moved. Ned stomped onto the brakes, the Glider stopping so fast, throwing Ned and Stine into the windshield, luckily it didn't even crack.

Stine woke, yelling in fright. Ned was trying to push Stine off so he could get back to the controls. Stine quickly climbed to the back, allowing Ned to swing the Seamoth Glider upwards. Ned put it to full power, the engine humming once again. They shot up, both pushed back by the force. Ned saw the surface, gradually stopping, the vehicle going up just a bit over the surface. Ned got back on course, woken quite a bit from the sudden loss of control.

Apart from the small excitement in the start of the trip, it was calm, and after two days passed Stine was driving, Ned sleeping in the back. But, his sleep didn't last long. For Stine was tapping him on the shoulder, telling him to wake up.

"What. What in the god's name do you want to be up for?" Ned said, covering his eyes from the sudden light.

"Um… I think we found a sand bar. And it is really, really long, and this is the biggest cut-in I could fine. And like, I mean sandbar as in, there is maybe a foot of water on top." Stine told Ned.

"Just go around it."

"I don't think you will want to. That'll increase our trip time to about another ten hours."

Ned sighed, and they switched places, and Ned saw the tiny path he was meant to take. It was obviously curvy, but it could only fit just a little less than four Seamoths. Ned would have to use something he hadn't used much. The different gears. Ned backed up a bit, the shot forwards, having to take such sharp turn, both of them could hear the engine. The engine flared up, roaring, then as Ned accelerated in a low gear to safely get around another corner, they could hear it spinning, then as Ned shifted it into a higher gear, there was a small noise then it flared up again as Ned sped up. Soon Ned blocked out the noise, focusing on the path, which was slowly widening.

Then, they shot out of the end of the entrance, where the sand bar gradually at first sloped down, then cut to a near straight way down. Ned had Stine take over for the next two kilometers, as he wanted to get some sleep.

"Ned, I think we're here." Stine said quietly, tapping Ned on the shoulder to wake him again.

Ned quickly got up, grabbed a water bottle and a food container, made sure both him and Stine were ready, then they headed out. It was just a pod with a single room base with some sort of power source located somewhere, and all the modules installed. Ned checked the base while Stine checked the pod. Ned went through the airlock, then looked around. There was nobody, but many signs of life, two messed up beds, water containers, a few lockers with some stuff in them. Ned saw nothing to help find the two survivors, so he went back up, going into the pod, where Stine was going through the storage.

"Nobody?"

"Nothing, just a bit of junk sitting around." Stine said, turning around.

Ned nodded, climbing down the ladder.

"You got any idea where they might be?" Stine asked, sitting down on one of the chairs.

"Maybe out and about. I'd say it's worth it to stay here for the next half day." Ned concluded.

Stine nodded, and soon, both were lightly dozing off.

There was a little noise, indicating a hatch had been unsealed. Ned woke, and shook Stine.

The hatch lifted up, and a man came climbing up. He looked at Ned and then Stine, not wearing a suit but normal clothes.

"I can see my message got out?"

Stine nodded and Ned said, "there's two of you, correct… Steve?"

Steve nodded, explaining, "yeah. I'm the pilot and co-captain, so to speak, of the Aurora, nice to meet you. I've Steve as you heard, and the very woman himself, who managed to get the Aurora onto a sandbar, who also is an absolute genius, Laura Nexes. She's in the base right now, but yeah, she was and is still our captain. Now, I do think we will be squashed in your vehicle, but it should be fine, and may I be allowed to drive it, I know how to drive classes C through V, and yours looked about a D, so I do know how to drive it."

Ned shrugged, and motioned for them to leave. Steve nodded and they left the pod, and did a small hello to Laura, packed up their good stuff, then they set off, Steve driving, the engine roaring as they went through the sandbar, and Stine, Ned, and Laura were a squished into the back.

 **A/N: Happy New Year people, hope this year isn't even half as bad as the last. Yeah, I'm pretty sorry I didn't get more done, but I thought that I just needed it out, which you could tell by the abrupt ending to this chapter. School is coming…**


	19. A Bonding Moment

They finally got to the base, after many air breaks, due to the oxygen generator not being able to provide enough air to actually sustain the correct levels of oxygen in the cabin. Ned was first out the hatch, and Steve was the last. Ned opened the hatch, let Laura in, then closed the hatch. They waited for the water to drain, then Ned did the process of opening the bulkhead. Ned pushed it open, and they both went in.

"Nice base. Pretty empty. We'll need one or two rooms because of me and Steve." Laura said, walking around a bit, trying to stretch.

Ned nodded, then went to his PDA, as it should've been done with its scan. He sat on his chair, then turned the PDA on from sleep mode. It was complete, and it had a small warning before the results.

Information needs to be taken correctly, by a logical mind.

Language is similar to messages sent to many Alterra ships, All within a range around planet 4546B. These messages are in the same language. A message was sent to the Aurora, minutes before it came into the orbit of planet 4546B. Two of the messages seem to be talking about the same thing. The Aurora and the Degasi were both meant to land on this planet, and both were sent the same message. The gun shooting ships down seems to be focused on keeping things away. Many reasons have been calculated. It is likely something is wrong with planet 4546B.

Ned rubbed his temples, unaware of Steve and Stine coming into the room, talking.

'What was it? The one missing piece to figuring out what was so big with this planet, right there, yet it was unknown. It had to be with something that could only affect things entering the planet's atmosphere because there was a planet full of life. What if it didn't want something to get out of the planet. But it was only shooting at ships, full of people. Bacteria? Disease? Maybe, that'd explain why it seemed the gun was scared of letting it get off the planet.'

"Ned, we have survivors, how about you stop mumbling about some bacteria," Stine said as Laura and Steve talked loudly about something.

Ned stood up, grabbed his builder, titanium, then went out into the dark midnight sea, putting another room atop the main room, then one connecting sideways to the main room, and another, connected to the main room. Ned had used half their titanium, but now they had enough room for all of them. Ned waited for the water in the airlock to drain, then opened the bulkhead.

"-and it rushed at me, eyes glowing along with its tail, and it- oh hey Ned," Steve said, cutting himself off to greet Ned.

Steve then continued telling his story to Stine, as Ned got rid of the clutter on his desk, then deconstructed the desk and the chair. He put them in the room above the main room, which he decided was now his. He made sure the bed was fine, then went back to the main room. The two were still talking, but Laura was just sitting on the ground, eyes closed.

"Hey, Laura. If you want to sleep, your room is to the right of the airlock," explained Ned.

She nodded, saying, "Thank you, but I'm not tired, just bored."

Ned nodded, then went over to the communicator, unplugged it, and carried it up to his room. He took off the panel for the box, plugged the communicator back it, and hung the communicator and powercell up. Now that that was given power, the light turned on again. It was a repeated SOS call from the Aurora, and a distress call from a pod, some poor guy, sounded about twenty, screaming for help as there was repeated smashing, until glass shattered, the screams got worse, the kid now yelling for his life, the sound of rushing water started, and some roar was heard, then the screams stopped, and very soon, the recording stopped, probably due to the communicator getting damaged because of the water. Ned returned to the main room, waiting for Stine or Steve to stop talking. Once they did, Ned spoke.

"Steve, Stine, have you noticed any odd pains that shouldn't be happening or some sort of ill feeling?"

"I mean, no." They both said in unison.

Ned sighed, then went back to Laura.

"Have you noticed any-"

"Any odd pains that shouldn't be happening, or some sort of ill feeling. No." Laura cut Ned off.

"Okay, then can you follow me for a moment?" Ned asked.

He climbed up the ladder, Laura coming up right after him. Ned waited for Laura to pull herself up to his room. Ned sat down at his desk, waited for Laura to be right next to him, then played the audio version of the scan results.

"Information needs to be taken correctly, by a logical mind. Language is similar to messages sent to many Alterra ships, All within a range around planet 4546B. These messages are in the same language. A message was sent to the Aurora, minutes before it came into the orbit of planet 4546B…"

"… It is likely something is wrong with planet 4546B."

Laura and Ned stood there is silence, Ned waiting for her to finish processing it all, and Laura, to process it all.

"I'd think because you're the highest rank here, you would need to know," Ned explained.

Laura nodded, still thinking about something.

"And I thought that if the gun is so keen on stopping things that can leave the planet from even landing correctly, then it doesn't want SOMETHING to leave this planet. And I also thought life would have to be aboard those ships they're shooting down so it has to be some sort of bacteria, able to spread to the rest of the galaxy." Ned explained further.

Laura nodded again, then thanked Ned for showing her that, then Laura left, saying that she was going to head to her room. Ned laid back in his chair, thoughts now on any rescue ship that would be coming. By now, word would've gotten to the Alterra Corp, but it would take another quarter to half a year, that was if Alterra had sent a good ship, and had acted near instantly. But no, they were probably ignoring it for as long as they possibly could, then they would send a ten seater, probably a ship that wasn't even meant to land on a planet, let alone an ocean planet.

Ned sighed, his thoughts full of anger for one of the first times in a long time. He picked up his fist then smashed it on the desk, shaking his PDA.

'Damn the corp! I never should've joined after my dad, I should've been working as a cargo hauler, or in the fleet,' Ned thought.

Ned got up and moved over to the communicator. He looked down at the buttons, then hit and held the record button.

"Ned Goddan, of the Aurora. If any survivors can hear me, coordinates are attached to this message. I have three survivors with me, Stine, the main pilot of the Aurora, Steve, and Laura, the captain of the Aurora. We established a base, and are so far doing well, we have even acquired a vehicle, a strong, fast, one. Just remember every day. Hope. Hope will bring you through the day." Ned said, waited a moment, then released the record button.

Ned sighed, and looked at the ground, wishing he could just go home, have everything he had before. Ned crawled into his bed, tired from the day. He looked at the ceiling for a moment, then closed his eyes.

Stine stopped talking with Steve after a short moment after seeing Laura go to bed, so Steve thought he would go to sleep too. Stine slid down his ladder, returning to his scratches. They didn't look like a mess anymore, but a full diagram of the Aurora, with a few listings here and there. There was then a calculated point of where the shot hit the Aurora, based off of the photo, as it got some remanence of light from the blast.

And boy, was that light BRIGHT. It was so bright, that it nearly seemed to take up a quarter of the picture if you didn't look good enough. But, it seemed as though the gun shouldn't have even done any severe damage. Sure, many would die, due to the ship shaking, the actual hull being smashed, along with some of the inside, but the air wouldn't vent because of all the bulkheads around the place. But something was for certain, it wasn't capable of causing critical hull damage, to such a point to the make the ship unusable.

Stine looked at it for a bit, slowly coming to the thought of, what if, just maybe, the gun didn't fire the typical round, maybe even a special type of beam weapon. But if it was, how could it get such large amounts of power. Stine, noticing his sleepiness, decided that it was about time for him to sleep. Especially as he was fighting to keep his eyes open, even though his mind was racing.

 **A/N: Well, hope this was long enough because, in all honesty, I'm starting to lose focus in this story, not canceling, though, just might not be putting quite as much effort as usual. (Which apparently means a bit more than one month or so in break time. Sorry guys!)**

 **Hope you enjoyed!**


	20. Tension

**A/N: Yay! Chapter 20! I didn't think I'd get this far so fast. Sure, it might've been something like 4 or 6 months, but I typically type much slower. Granted, I have a lot of short ones but, still. By the way, somebody is going to speak weird for a part, so here is a bit of guide for reading their dialog. The letters a strictly replaced with only what is given to you with this:**

 **K = G.**

 **T = D.**

 **N = GN.**

 **M, V, P, and F = B**

 **And "ing" is replaced with ign. Beautiful, ain't it?**

 **Also, any sort of "Th" is replaced with "d". Such as, "Dis", which is "This"**

Ned opened his eyes, still tired. He checked his watch and found it was 9:37. He closed his eyes, sighing. Ned raised his head, opening his eyes a bit. He swung his legs around to the side of his bed and stretched. He yawned while getting up, as the transmitter beeped.

Ned moved over to it, and let it play. It was just static, for a minute or two. Ned slid down the ladder, grabbing a bottle and a cured peeper, noticing that three of each was left. He took a bite of the peeper, then set it down of the table that had been put into the middle of the room. Ned took a quick swig from the bottle, then put the cap back on. He then knocked on the ceiling of Stine's room. Ned waited but got no response.

"Stine! Stine, common, wake up," Ned said quietly, not wanting to wake the other two. "Stine! Up you lazy bum!"

Ned climbed down the ladder and turned on the lights. He shook Stine a bit. Stine woke with a small jolt, looking up at Ned.

"What Ned? What time is it?" Stine asked, rolling over and scratching what was slowly becoming a beard.

"We need to go out and collect some food and water, and we might have to go out for some resources. We're getting low, even more so because we now have four people, and we will have to make some sort of submarine to fit all of us," Ned explained, talking fast.

Stine nodded, and they left the habitat, swimming over to the Seamoth Glider. Ned got into the pilot's seat, shaking.

"Damn, that water is cold at night, you know, never actually noticed that before," Stine muttered as he moved into the back.

Ned nodded, starting the engine. Once. Twice. A third time. And the fourth.

"You think it's just too cold? It's just been sitting out here all night," Though Stine looking behind him, at where the engine was.

"I would, but we've left it out here before, haven't we."

Ned tried starting it again, but it just wouldn't. He got out of the seat, crawling next to Stine, and opened the engine's hatches. Ned tried doing tightening the motor. He then told Sine to try and start it. It still didn't work, so Ned checked the power levels of the powercell, which was a nice seventy-six percent. Ned took out the actual tube for the engine and replaced it with the spare they had gotten from the last engine from the Glider. Ned made sure it was properly attached, then removed his hands from the equation.

"Start her up."

The engine rumbled, then started spinning once more. Ned grabbed the fiber mesh rag that was also in the locker, wiping his hands free of oil. They switched spots again, and finally managed to get moving. They soon came to a new spot of the ocean, and moved out, catching as much fish as they could, making sure they didn't grab any babies, and to leave enough for later, and so there could be even more,

"You know, I'm actually quite glad you didn't put the panel of the engine back on. I'm nice and toasty!" said Stine, after both had come back into the Glider.

"Yeah, but you're also blocking most the heat from reaching me," Ned said, shivering still.

Stine chuckled, so Ned swerved crazily, throwing Stine's face into the wall.

"FUCK! My nose, dude!" Stine said, blood already seeping through the now slightly crooked nose.

Stine wrapped his arms around Ned's neck, pinning it to the chair's back. Ned struggled for a moment, then jabbed Stine in the ribs with his elbow. Stine dragged Ned out of his seat, slamming him down onto the ground of the Glider.

In moments, the fight was over, Ned standing over Stine, who was holding his nose, in obvious pain.

"The fuck, Stine?" Ned asked, wiping his cheek.

"You made me break my nose, you shit," Stine said, his nose blocked by the blood now pouring from his nose.

Ned grabbed a bit of clean fiber mesh and tossed it onto Stine. He grabbed it and held it to his nose.

The Glider shook violently, tossing Ned onto the floor and making Stine hit the back of his head on the floor.

"Ow, my head. Gned? Would you bind handing me anoder rag?" Stine asked, his pronouncing some words wrong due to his blocked up nose.

Ned tossed him another rag, then looked out the glass, seeing nothing but darkness, "ah, well now look at what you've done. Now I don't know where we are."

"I bean, id's probably not by bauld, as you were acdually the one in charge ob driving," Stine retorted, his voice getting worse.

Ned rolled his eyes, then tried to move, but the Glider stayed put. Ned sighed in frustration.

"Ib you keep sighing like dat you're goign to lose all your moral," Stine said, coughing, splattering blood through the fiber mesh and all over the wall. "Oh, shid, sorry Ned."

Ned got up, scratching his head. "Engine is gone, Stine. It must've been damaged by the hit. If you move, I could try to see what might be wrong. Also, please stop talking, you're hurting my head more than your fist did."

Stine moved, allowing Ned to look at the engine. He pulled his head out of the engine cavity and looked at Stine.

"Well, we can still run it fine, but this little craft isn't going to be able to be used for too much longer."

Ned got back into his seat, and turned the engine on, backing away from the rock. He sped off, hopefully, what was towards the base.

 **A/N: Sorry guys, for the huge delay. Kinda just happens, right? Anyways, I'm putting as much time into it as I can, so I hope I can get it a little longer before July 9th. But, I might be starting a little side story for whenever I just can't focus on this one. It's not like it's going to be nearly as good as this one, it's really just a random side story.**


	21. Another Mistake

**A/N: Hmmm. Maybe an apology for the long wait?**

 **YOU GUESSED IT! Time to dedicate 500% of my time on this! WOOOOOOOOOO!**

Ned was for the most part right about the direction and had gotten back more or less as Steve and Laura started to get up. Ned did a bit of processing of the food, water, and the few resources they had gotten. After that, they all sat down at the table to eat.

"Have you guys ever thought of constructing an antenna on the roof?" Laura asked, gesturing up towards the ceiling.

"Nah, we've just used the radio communications you saw," Stine said. "Also, if I gotta be honest with you Ned, I'm getting sick of fish. Any way of maybe like… Liquefying them?"

"I could. However it would take more time, power, and probably would require a new machine, along with some possible ingredients, a couple spoons, a couple bowls, then we would even need some sort of oven or microwave, to actually make it, well, higher than room temperature." Ned thought, taking a rather large bite of his fish.

"Well, in any case, I was thinking, we build an antenna to that communication box you have in your room, Ned, and we could boost our range far enough… Well, that's to do with how we build it. But, it'd be damn far." Laura said, standing up, as she had finished her meal.

"We will need resources! I'm off. Haven't been out enough."

Ned nodded and got up, pushing in his chair. Ned went out the bulkhead, leaving Laura, Steve, and Stine in the room finishing their meal. He took the Glider, naturally. He started to sweep the area for as much as he could get, ending up making three trips before the Glider warned of low power. A recharge later and five more trips, the Glider started to randomly turn off for long periods, leaving Ned to get out quickly, and swim to the surface every now and then before the engine started again.

Ned drove about three-quarters to the base from where he stopped, before the engine gave out, and didn't turn back on. Ned had to swim the rest of the way and tell the others about it. Steve and Laura jumped right on the opportunity of something to do rather than just collect a few resources, which on its own was boring. They swam back to the Seamoth Glider and pushed it back. As they got near the base, they tried to stop it, but it was meant to glide, and as it was only two weak humans on the back and one in the cockpit they couldn't stop it before it banged up against the base's wall.

The wall was crumpled, but the Glider had been smashed, Ned only getting out just in time to not get crushed. The things in the vehicle were lost, along with a bit of the engine, which had overheated massively, melting a bit of metal to another piece. Unluckily for Ned, he couldn't stop in time to not slam against the base's walls, along with Steve, who had no flippers. Steve seemed to just have general bruising, but Ned was not so fortunate. Ned seemed to have gotten several broken bones mostly just on his left, and some serious bruising.

They decided that because of Ned's work, they could stay in the base for a while, as half of them were going to be hurting for at least a week. Ned had a sling for both his arm and leg after he took a look at the wall of his room. It was dented in quite decently, but nothing was actually harmed, apart from the look of the room.

 **A/N: Long wait, short chapter as usual. Should be my motto at this point.  
** " **Long wait? You can bet yourself a short chapter!"**

 **Yeah, sorry, as usual. Hope to be focusing on this a bit more, but right now I have a small idea in the works, which might be some sort of causal story, meant for getting me in a writing mood when I just can't seem to write in this one, which happens a lot.**

 **So basically, might be a mostly pre-written story up soon.**

 **Now that actually brings a thought, should I make a really long wait, but make a lot of chapters pre-written?**

 **Anyways, have a good day and never waste a single moment.**


	22. Old Buildings?

**A/N: Sorry for the long wait. This time around, I have a valid excuse, Kinda. I went hiking in North and South Carolina, even a bit in Tennessee and Georgia. Walked this one trail, the hike was a decent amount over a mile forwards, and about 650 feet Incline change.**

 **But, I'll still probably take a bit longer to post this so… Eh.**

 **And… Yeah. Most of the people who are following this story (Thanks!), will be reading this a day after Easter. Would've come out near a full five days earlier, but I've been working and doing school at the same time. Happy late Easter! (To those who celebrate it)**

When Ned opened his eyes every morning, he would see the awful, twisted, crumpled metal. It was many days before Ned could walk. And in these days Steve helped him a bit, as he had gotten right back into shape. While those two were in the base together, Stine and Laura had taken to adventuring. They had found an odd area of mostly flat sand and rock, with a bit of wreckage about. Laura was exploring a wreck while Stine searching around it.

Stine moved closer to a cargo box his left light flickering, likely due to low battery. He got to the box, and pried it open, armed with the crowbar Stine and Ned found in their first wreck. Stine looked inside once the air rushed out of it, to see a couple of water bottles, nearly all of them crushed. He grabbed the ones that were sealed and placed the lid on top of the box. He then moved to the next bit, which was a reaction control thruster. It was massive, seeing as it was meant to push something like the Aurora.

Stine moved around the thruster. It had a bit of the main engine attached, but it's components were too burnt and damaged to even just be deconstructed. Stine moved to the next bit of wreckage when his left light completely went out. Stine instantly noticed the decrease in visibility and started to think if he should go and charge the battery. Stine decided that it could easily wait, because he still had the right one, and could still see.

So he continued on, managing to get some steel off of a door. But, that was it for Stine, in terms of collecting resources. He returned to the surface, then dipped back down to find Laura. He searched all over the wreck and even the outside, but no Laura. He saw some lights a couple meters off into the empty field, so he started to swim towards it. The light was farther than it had seemed, as it was down a little cliff.

Stine tried to see what was the bottom like, and could just make out sandy rock and seagrass. The seagrass was rippling, in a uniform direction. It looked almost hypnotizing, but Stine pulled his eyes off the grass and looked for the light. It was dim, appearing to be slightly behind something. Stine moved down the cliff, stay close to the cliff. Suddenly, the light disappeared.

Stine stopped swimming, squinting his eyes in hopes he would spot a dim glow. Suddenly, the area was filled with light. There was a hulking structure stuck in the sand, shifted at roughly a five-degree angle. There were lights all over, and the inside had lights too. At the very bottom, Stine could see a figure. He kicked off to that direction, swimming as fast as he could. Stine reached the figure, who was gazing up at the lights. He assumed them to be Laura, so he simply tapped their shoulder. They spun around, obviously startled. So startled, that with them a fist came swinging around. It hit Stine square in the nose, and he could feel it break. Stine kicked off from the ground, grabbed his nose.

'That is definitely broken.' Stine thought. 'What's Laura's problem?'

Stine got to the surface and ripped off his mask. He breathed in the cold salty air and held his nose in pain. He removed his hand from his face and saw watery blood covering his hand. Once he saw this, the pain increased. Stine swore under his breath. Laura burst up, taking a glance at him.

"Sorry Stine, are you okay?" Laura asked, swimming closer to him.

Stine spoke with a stifled voice, "Not really, my nose has just been broken for the third time."

Stine pressed on the left nostril and blew as much air as he could through the right nostril, spewing out blood into the ocean.

"You know, all this blood with attract SOMETHING. We should get home. Especially so you don't get an infection," Laura commanded.

"No. We should check the thing first. It looked like it was pressurized still," Stine rejected her orders.

"Stine-"

"Laura," Stine said forcefully.

She grumbled and muttered something under her breath, but soon dived down. They soon came to an airlock and after a bit of guessing on the panel, the door moved a bit. Then sparked a bit, sitting still. Stine put the crowbar in the slit and yanked it around using the wall as leverage. It slid a tiny bit, but to no avail. Until Laura joined him, then it slid right on open. They moved into the small room, and Stine cycled the lock. The water drained, then the air was pushed in.

The inside door opened, and they stepped in. There was about a foot of water on the floor, making it just a bit harder for them to walk on the slightly tilted floor.

"Well. If you ask me, this place was here before the Aurora. You can notice it isn't part because- look. This floor is getting corroded. The Aurora won't be rusted for a long time, as it's mostly titanium." Laura said wearily.

Laura turned off her lights and took a few steps into the room.

"Uh, Laura," Stine said, stepping forwards.

Laura looked at him and motioned to move away but it was much too late. Laura felt the floor move a bit, so she attempted to jump to safety. Instead, the floor fell mid-jump, which caused her to be just short. She caught herself on the edge, holding with just the tips of her fingers as the water splashed on her face, as it rushed down.

"Stine! Please, just move so the floor isn't going to break."

Stine slowly moved away, as Laura tried pulling herself up.

"Laura, just pull yourself up."

Laura managed to pull herself into her elbows, before Stine slipped, making a box slide down to Laura. There was a loud crack, then Laura plummeted.

 _ **IMPORTANT ANOUNCMENT BELOW!**_

 **A bit cruel to end on a cliffhanger, but I really needed to just shove it out.**

 **Sorry for the long wait once again.**

 _ **THE IMPORTANT ANOUNCMENT:**_

 _ **I will be posting a new story, for those who are somewhat interested in checking out my writing. It's based loosely off a game called Space Engineers. And based rather heavily on a Scenario created for the game by Duckroll. (Escape From Mars)**_


	23. Old Buildings

Laura hit the next floor down with a small splash. This floor creaked loudly, but supported her.

"You okay? Stine asked, leaning over the edge slightly to get a better look.

"Yeah, just some bruising," Laura said with a tone of pain, sitting up.

Stine slowly lowered himself and offered a hand to her. She took it and he pulled her up. The floor creaked as her weight was shifted about.

"Could you go through that door, might be able to find a stable piece," Stine asked Laura as she walked around a bit.

She nodded, leaving almost at once. She came back nodding.

"It's good."

Stine hopped down with a splash, then pointed up saying, "We should actually, probably just climb back. Come back more prepared."

Laura looked up, seemed to freeze for a moment, then nodded. They started the climb. It was easy but it was a while before they got to the top. Once they had, Stine mentioned about a box full of radio sets.

"I'm pretty sure those are from the emergency supplies right next to the bridge, but I don't know why they are here, as this isn't from the Aurora. But anyways, these radios can go through I think it said a kilometer of clear transmission, and two kilometers of simple location info," Stine explained as they went through the airlock.

"Yeah, but we should get them once we get back with Steve and Ned," Laura proposed.

Stine nodded, then pulled the hatch handle. Water rushed in, and once the room was full, Stine pushed the hatch open. They swam out, back into the dark blue. The two figures swam across the ocean, only a couple meters from the surface. It took the whole night to get back, and by then Stine and Laura were so exhausted, they didn't even say anything to Ned or Steve, just straight to bed.

Another day, and the entire crew were heading straight to the- whatever it was. When they visited again, the lights were still on. This time, two of them checked the hull while the other two went into the airlock and waited for the other two to come back.

Soon, they were inside. They agreed on a cycle of; Find interesting box, alert others to leaving then leave. Only one other can be gone.

"Hey! Found the radio's me and Stine talked about!" Laura yelled over to Steve.

"Alright, pass em out," said Stine, who was standing in a foot of water, getting boxes off the floor and passing them up to Steve.

After only a moment, everybody but Ned had a radio.

"I'll give him one once he comes back," Laura explained. "Also, everybody to frequency seven, and rename your transponder to your name then 'radio'."

"Hear me?" Stine whispered into his, testing it.

"Perfectly," both of them responded.

They got back to work, and soon, they actually looked rather well. Two of them grabbed the last crate which was rather large and heavy, and unlabeled. They slowly made their way back as the sun was edging close to the horizon. Stine and Ned had full on suits and had finally remembered to bring the helmet, they could talk to not only each other, but Steve and Laura. Though, Steve and Laura couldn't respond with their own voice.

"Hey, do you see that chunk of hull there? About to our seven, a little bit ahead?"

"Yeah, looks like something we might be able to get something from."

They finished their trip only a bit after the sun set, and looked at their goods. Radios, and two extra sets, five sharp knives, two sharpener stones, ten liters of clean water, one liter package of salt, three packages of vegetables and steak, and a couple random parts from the big box.

"Well, I'm off to bed, so I can end this day happy," Laura got up with a small grin.

"Alright, I guess if you're gonna go, I'll follow," Steve concluded, getting up and yawning, "after all, I wouldn't want to oversleep this beautiful thing."

"Ah, piss off. Go to bed so you have plenty time to masturbate," Stine retorted, then picked up the small handheld mirror that was on the table, he said after tossing it at Steve, "here, so you can masturbate to what you love."

Steve caught it, nodded then left to his room, the bulkhead sealed shut. Stine returned his gaze to where Ned was, but it seemed that Ned had disappeared while Stine and Steve were "discussing" uh, "things". Stine sighed and finished off his water bottle and threw it in a big pile that slowly acclimated. Stine got up and looked around the room. He hadn't noticed before, but Ned did a good job on it. Even though the outside was circular, it was very square looking, with only a slight curve on the edges. There was a small counter that used to be Ned's desk. It also had a small basin with a drain into a bucket. There was another counter, even though Stine never noticed it even being put in. There was a small "stove" here. It was the coils of a heater, with the heater down below. On top of the coil there was a small metal plate. The nob of the heater was sticking out the front to control the heat. The panel from their electrical mess up was still off, the box gone. Stine looked around, and saw that machine that made the new engine for the old Glider. Then in the middle there was the table Stine had put in, and the four chairs that Laura had brought from somewhere. There was then the big pile of bottles next to the now single locker, where the boxes from the ship sat.

"Stine? Shouldn't you be off to bed?" asked Ned, after he came through the airlock bulkhead.

Stine jumped, turning to face him, "yeah, I probably should. What were you doing?"

"Collecting the remains of the Glider and fixing the dent in my wall a bit. I was just going off to bed. You know, the sun in already coming up," Ned said, taking off the entire helmet rather than just the visor.

"Yeah, I was… Yeah. I'm off, if it's really that late," Stine muttered, watching Ned take off his Rad suit. "You know Ned, why were you wearing the entire Rad suit? Usually we just wear the outside and insulating layer."

"Oh, yeah, I just didn't feel like disassembling it entirely, seeing as I had put in the lead lining before," Ned casually answered, leaving the pants of the suit on, holding the upper piece and helmet.

Stine watched him walk to his ladder. He had an odd offset to his right side, which he also seemed to be treating very gentle. Stine shook his head slowly, then walked himself to bed. He looked at his wall, and shook his head again. He had given up a long time ago. Stine fell into bed, the lights turning off. He sat there for a while before starting to fade into the beckoning clutch of sleep.

 **A/N: And just as Stine needs to sleep, I very dearly need to. I have a lot to do tomorrow, but after that, I will have a decent schedule. Then, I am going somewhere, then for a while it should be fine, then again I'm going on vacation somewhere in the month of August. So yeah. I MIGHT get faster. Who knows, seeing as I've recently taken up biking, and I've been trying to exercise a lot, AND I have a bit of a life, apart from writing and video games. So, let's hope you see more from me.**


	24. The Man with a Plan

"So, what's it today?" Steve inquired, stalking Ned to the table.

"Remember that other wreck we saw while coming back?" Ned said with a mouthful of food still in his mouth.

Steve thought for a moment, then responded with, "No, actually. Where was it?"

"Kinda near the powered quote on quote wreck, but a bit in between that and the kelp that's near us," informed Stine, swallowing his fish.

Laura thought for a moment, shoveling a bit more fish into her mouth, "Yeah, I remember that, but-" she took a moment to swallow the food, then hastily shoveled more in, "I thought… That looked a bit too deep."

Ned nodded for a moment, "Maybe, but there are a few blueprints for air pumps and pipes, we could just use that. It'd take a bit of coordination, but it'd work."

"Oh, that just sounds-" Stine started to say when Steve finished the sentence.

"Like a horrid plan. Just imagine it, one of the pipes break, then at least somebody is dead. The person manning it at the top falls off, or comms go down, and at least somebody is dead. And, besides, we don't all have radios, AND waterproof full body suits."

Ned thought for a moment, "Yeah, but we can get radiation suits, and the pipes are rated for so much pressure and temperature change it is actually surprising. The company tested it at two thousand psi, as well as molten rock, and solid nitrogen. It's fine."

"Hey, you didn't mention about the coordination thing!" Stine mentioned for Steve.

"True enough, but we'll have constant radio communication and the guy up top will have a hard time falling off. So, it's rather safe. These things have been used for underwater excavations for years," informed ned, standing up as he had finished his breakfast.

Steve gave a small sigh of defeat and went back to his own fish.

"Why don't you want to do it?" Ned asked, sliding his suit on.

"Oh, it's fine. I'll do it."

Stine and Steve met each other's eyes for just a moment, but both seemed to agree on what they were thinking.

'I fucking hate the ocean'.

Ned headed for the airlock, saying, "well, I'm going to get the pump fixed up, I already have just about everything I need."

And with that, he stepped in the small confines of the airlock and closed the bulkhead.

There was a bit of a pause, but then Laura got up saying, "well, I think I'll go and help him. And, you guys make two full body suits, you'll need them, so you can talk."

And with that, she left after Ned.

Laura could still see Ned. He was obviously taking his time swimming to the wreck, but it still took a bit for Laura to catch up. He saw her as she came up to him, and waved. She waved back, and swam over his head to refill her tanks above the water.

She flipped onto her back, and while using her feet, the auto-refill filter sucked up all the necessary air and compressed the air to two thousand five hundred and twenty psi. Then, it removed the water from the tanks. Laura sank back into the water, flipping around. She looked for Ned, spotting him about ten or so meters ahead.

After an uneventful trip, they arrived above the wreck. Ned set all of the pipes out on the water, as they would float until they were connected to a pump. The pump was a bit harder, however. It was a lot bigger than even five of the two meter long two inch round pipes.

So instead of pushing it slowly along the surface, Ned had took it apart. He and Laura put it back together, and by the time the sun was coming down, the pump was near finished. The tank, the filter, the temp control module, and atmospheric sensor still needed to be installed. But, it was a meter and a half tall, and about two meters wide, and was one meter across.

So overall it wasn't half bad work, considering that no tools were used. Most of it was the pump and the solar panels, but there was a small platform enough for three people to squeeze onto. Therefore, they decided to wait until morning to head back.

A/N: Small one, but not quite as big of a delay. I'd say it was done pretty well, especially because I've been on vacation, starved of sleep, and suffering from heat exhaustion. I know this was a bit boring, but I'm trying to work on dialog, character, setup, and smoothness of the chapter.

But, it might be a bit more enticing next chapter.


	25. The Plan

**EDIT: GUYS! I messed up, big time. I posted two chapters at once, which is good, but now the other one isn't getting any views and people must be confused a bit about the plot at this point. So, before you read this chapter, go back and read chapter 24 (A Man with a Plan).**

Stine and Steve had somehow printed off two suits, get a meal, grab food for the other two, sleep for three hours, make knives and flashlights for everybody, AND get to Laura and Ned just a bit after the sun came back up.

"Ned! Laura!" Stine said after his helmet was off, shaking Ned's foot.

Ned woke with a small start, realizing what was happening he woke Laura up before Steve or Stine had to.

"Got some food and water for you two, knives and flashlights all round, and Laura, we got a suit for you," said Steve, as Stine passed out the suit and he passed the flashlights and knives.

"Alright. Who's staying-" Laura sleepily started.

"I thought we agreed it was me," interrupted Steve.

"Dammit! I forgot," Stine whined.

Ned scoffed, obviously in a bad mood from sleeping badly. Laura had already finished putting on the new suit, and Steve had climbed up the small ladder onto the platform. Laura put on the helmet and dived right into the water. Ned jumped off after making sure his helmet was secure.

"Alright, you know how to operate the pump, right?" Stine asked.

Steve nodded, sitting down cross-legged in front of the controls. After that, Laura dived down with a flashlight in hand. Stine sighed, then followed. Ned nodded to Steve, then dived with them.

"Oh, SHIT!" yelled Ned as they reached about fifty meters, "the pump isn't complete!"

"Did I just actually hear that?"

"I'm afraid so, Steve. I have the parts, just give me a few minutes. You guys, come back."

Ned had started to swim up as soon as he started to talk, and broke the surface very quickly. He climbed up and placed the missing parts into the pump.

After that, the sun was about twenty degrees up, and everybody was praying nothing was missed.

They dived back down, this time reaching the wreck, and Stine and Laura were very surprised at how far down the wreck was.

"A hundred and eighty-nine meters? Dang, this is deep. If we fuck up, we are so dead," Stine said, his voice shaking with fear.

"It's fine, the pipe is right here, the pump works, and the pipes for SURE won't break," groaned Ned, grunting as he pulled a handle for a door.

Stine helped, and the door popped open. Immediately, each of their visions was filled with white bubbles. Stine and Ned were thrown back, while Laura was just moved a foot. The room still had a lot of air in it, probably a bit compressed.

"Well shit, that was scary," Stine stated after the bubbles faded.

"Uh, I think you're going to find this a bit scarier. Try not to throw up," Laura said, after taking a peep inside. There were bodies.

There were bodies.

Lots. Most quite rotten, bones showing, but some still resembled a human. Now, they were floating about, some now floating away from the wreck.

"Well, who has the strongest stomach, we still need to get in there, no discussion," ordered Laura, looking away from the mess.

"Guys, are you all okay?" Steve butted in.

"Yes. Why?"

"It's just that there is a FUCKING arm and empty shirt just floating up here. Honestly, I think I might have to get lunch early, I just lost my breakfast," Steve's voice quivered heavily, and it sounded like he threw up again at the end.

"Yeah, we just found a more than unpleasant surprise. I, I can count ten bodies from here. And I can't even fucking see in there, it's so dark!" Laura said, slowly drifting into the room, turning on her flashlight. "Oh, FUCK!"

Laura swam out so fast, she whizzed past Stine and Ned, and only came to a stop about ten meters behind them.

"What?" all of them asked.

"Just, I saw something I'd rather not see. I somebody got crushed between a support cylinder and a desk. Just-" Her voice failed at this point, and all of them heard her give a small yelp of disgust.

"Well, I guess I'll go in. Shall I count the bodies, or just find the next door?" Ned asked.

"Whatever," Stine said. "Just go and try and find something like a storage room while I refill my tanks. Actually, you two should as well."

Laura nodded, obviously still shaken. They all went to the end of the pipe, where some tubes and valves were set up. All of them refilled their tanks, then Stine held by the door in case of trouble, and Ned went in.

"About fifteen, guys. Also, there is a door, but Stine, I'm definitely going to need your help with this one," Ned reported.

Stine went in, clenching his stomach. He got to the door and saw the problem just about instantly. Ned had aimed to slam his knife into the crack to slowly open the door as it was broken but had hit the side of the door.

"There must be air on the other side, and the pressure difference is sucking the knife into the door. So hold onto something," Ned said, his voice now starting to give a tone of fear and disgust.

Stine grabbed the knife, then a locker door. He pulled on the knife, but only managed to raise it a bit. It didn't matter, and now the escaping air shot the knife across the room, stopping near a locker. The air kept rushing out until finally, it was all out, and water had rushed in.

"Alright, try opening the door, I'll get my knife," Ned said.

And, indeed this is what happened. The door opened quickly now and revealed a white room, devoid of damage, crates floating about.

"Jackpot."

Ned pushed off the door frame, and into the room. He grabbed one crate and took a look at the label.

"Damn! We are going to drink this memory away tonight," Ned said, shoving the crate to Stine.

Stine read it and laughed, "ah, thank God. At least we can forget about this for a few hours."

Ned found another four. To be fair, each was rather small and looked as though it only held four each. He got to another. It was just one labeled, 'luxury meals'.

Another was silverware, and as Ned got to the next, Laura cried out, "Watch out!"

Stine was able to get away with the luxury meals box, as the ceiling fell in. But, Ned was not. Instead, he was trapped.

Ned screamed in pain.

"Signal lost. Last known location shown on maps."

Silence fell upon each of them. Then, Stine started grabbing at the rubble, trying to get to him. Laura joined him, and they only stopped for oxygen when the suits told them. Both of them could see, using the hud of their helmets, that he was only a meter away. Stine grabbed a large beam, pulling it up. Ned was revealed. He wasn't good, let's put it at that. Laura grabbed him, and Stine dropped the beam, following her out to the pipe.

They put an oxygen mask on his face, and Steve started the pump. After thirty seconds or so, Ned started breathing again.

"That's not fucking natural. He just, like, came back from death. What the fuck?" Stine said, obviously relieved, even if he wasn't fully showing it.

After that, they took the mask off Ned and rushed him to the surface as fast as they could without suffering decompression sickness. Steve jumped off the platform when they surfaced, and helped then put him up on the platform. Since they couldn't really do much, each of them went down and collected the crates.

They used two alcohol bottles to pour over Ned's cuts, trying their hardest to keep bacteria and viruses out. Luckily, each human registered on the Aurora took a rather expensive pill that made their immune system capable of adapting to a new problem within seconds. So, they didn't have to worry about any new bacteria proving an extremely hard to fight off.

It was sunrise, and they had gone through the first crate of 'alcoholic drinks'. Ned had, at many moments, seemed to wake up and try to say something.

After a bit, they came up with the idea of a raft. They disassembled the pump, and using the minds of two engineers and one pilot, they managed to make a raft that was powered not by hand, but instead by solar. They used the tank, compressor, and a valve to create a source of thrust.

They loaded Ned onto it, all with tears in their eyes. It only had room for one over, which was decided to be Stine. The other two carried the crates home, trailing about five meters behind.

"Turn a bit right. Now a bit to the left," Steve guided, trying to avoid a Stalker that was tugging around a bit of scrap metal.

It went on like this for a while, Ned's breathing slowly fading, becoming shallow.

Once they arrived at the base, Laura made a plan, and they put into action. Stine took off his suit and put Ned into it as gently as he could. He cranked up the oxygen percentage, then they went through the airlock, Laura and Steve following.

"Fuck, Ned is heavy! Hurry, help me to his bed," Stine grunted, speed walking to the ladder.

Steve went up the ladder, and they carried him up together. Then he was put in the bed.

"Computer! Scan for injuries! Now!" Stine hurried the computer on, fumbling with the first aid kit Laura had thrown up the ladder.

"Multiple broken bones. Low blood pressure. Minor HAPE. Infected foot, and major bruising. Minor open wounds. I require advanced medical equipment, and fourteen Earth days, and ten kilowatts of power per second," the computer listed.

"Steve, could you install two power generators?" Stine pleaded.

He nodded and left immediately. Stine made sure that the thing was turned on, and that the suit was still working as it should. Then, he connected the tanks directly to the oxygen supply of the room, to make sure the suit filter didn't overheat and fail.

After that, there wasn't much he could do but wait for Steve to finish the generators. Steve heard at that very moment, the airlock opening. He started the procedure, then slid the metal cover over him.

"Do you think he'll be able to still work as usual? Like, go through wrecks?" Stine said, looking off into the distance.

"Uhmm… hard to say. It depends pretty heavily on not only what that machine can do, but how Ned took the incident." Laura shuddered a bit, just of the memory of it. "It's possible that Ned just won't be able to ever look at a corpse, or go near a wreck like that."

Stine nodded, taking a mouthful of the strong beer that was in the crates. The base was calm, only a few lights on. Stine had sealed off Ned's room and was going to leave it like that for a day. After all, the generators were only barely enough to run the medical procedure, so instead, they were shutting off everything they didn't need. And, after a day the power cells would be near empty. So, they would feed Ned during a five minutes break, and then he would be back in for half a day, and then the cycle would continue until he was fully healed.

But, first, they had to wait a day.

 **And, so will you! Though, it's for a good reason. Not just me bein weird. I've been on vacation with no way to post anything, but with a surprising and sudden passion for writing more. So, the last chapter and this one have been created while I was on vacation, BUT! I did start a decent amount of the next chapter, and it should only take a day to finish. I hope I did this rather major chapter right- it was meant to go back to the fact that the Aurora was a big ship, and a big ship has to have tons of people aboard.**

 **Oh, and the minor fact Ned is out of it for fourteen days, and possibly permanently scarred.**

 **Hope you enjoyed!**


	26. Aftermath of the Plan, and More Progress

By the time Laura woke up, she had a pretty bad hangover, and sunlight was streaming through the window, the water causing it to dance. She yawned, stretching. She swung around and put her feet down on the floor. The cold, freezing, sub-zero floor.

Laura yelled out a quick swear and pulled her feet up.

Laura heard through the bulkhead, "oh god she's awake."

She listened closely, but they had further lowered their voices, and some scraping and footsteps could be heard.

Laura put her feet back on the floor, gave a small shudder. After all, the room was only something like forty degrees, and she was wearing very little. Laura got up and briskly walked to the dresser she had put in her room.

She grabbed a random selection of the two pairs of clothes she had and covered up. She stormed over to the door, disregarding her coffee machine.

"She's coming out go!"

Laura pushed open the door, to see Steve with only his lower clothing on, frozen in place, with a hand on his room bulkhead's handle, and Stine, holding a bottle that still was quarter full, perched on a very small ladder that was leaning up on the table. The room was so cold, but despite this, Stine only had the pair of ripped shorts from when the Aurora crashed on, and a light bulb in hand, in the middle of unscrewing the currently burnt out one.

Stine's face curved into a nervous smile, and he stuttered, "good morning, Laura. Uh, you, yeah."

"I'm not going to ask, just- get a shirt on and clean up while I get some coffee," Laura said, turning around to get some coffee.

She closed her bulkhead and sealed it. She sighed and went to the thermostat to her room. It was at eighty-five, which was what she had left it at when she went to bed. But it was also reporting the temperature in the room being forty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. She did some very quick math then adjusted the thermostat to a hundred and eighteen, hoping it would fix the issue. She moved over to the coffee machine, and turned it on, putting a large mug under the small tube.

She leaned against her counter. Laura used to be a light smoker, actually. The crash had deprived her of all possible cigarettes, but seeing as she was already such a light smoker and on the edge of quitting, it didn't change much. But what she wouldn't give for one, at that very morning. She sighed and looked over. The coffee machine hadn't finished quite yet- probably having some difficulty warming up. Laura laid back down on her bed, bundling up and staring at her ceiling. She heard the soft bubbling of the machine stop, so she heaved herself out of bed, and held down the release button, watching the level of the coffee. After her mug was full, she moved away from the counter blowing a little bit of air onto the hot coffee.

Laura opened her door once more, to see Stine in a sweater a little too big for his arms, holding a cup of steaming- tea?

"Where did you get the sweater, and where did you get that damn tea?" her sharp voice pierced the silence Stine was enjoying.

He jumped, almost spilling the hot liquid over himself, "Steve and I went back to the wreck while you were sleeping. Got lots of shiet."

"You went back?"

"Yeah, I mean, after you first see it, it's a lot better to look at. We even identified a few of them. Steve says we should honor them and bury them, but I say to hell with it. The fish have already gotten to nearly every last bit of meat there that isn't sealed away," Stine rambled, taking a sip of the tea.

Laura grimaced, and sat down, "did you guys give Ned his meal yet?"

Stine nodded, taking another sip. They sat there in silence for a while. Steve's room opened up and he walked out wearing a dull red sweater, and blue yoga pants a size or two too small.

"Why in gods green earth are you wearing FUCKING TIGHT YOGA PANTS?" Laura exclaimed as Steve walked up to the table.

He shrugged, "couldn't find much else that was comfy."

"How is something that is squeezing your nuts comfortable?" piped up Stine.

Steve just shrugged, grabbing one of the now many salted fish from the food locker. He grabbed an extra one, tossing it to Laura. After the small intrusion, it had returned to absolute silence, save for the swishing of water outside the walls. Laura soon finished her coffee and got her suit on, heading out. Only seconds later, and she hurried back in.

"Fuck that!" Laura said, pulling off her suit as soon as she got through the bulkhead.

"The water is cold, isn't it? Happened rather quickly, literally overnight," Stine explained, "that is the type of temperature we worked overnight in. Your welcome. By the way, bet you've gotten tired of y'know, the same bras and underwear, right?"

"Why the hell have you even thought of that? And, for your damn information, yes. Got any?"

Stine nodded, pointing to two boxes right outside Laura's door. Laura finished taking off her boots and hanging everything up. She grabbed both crates and walked into her room, with an icy glare at both Stine and Steve. They didn't quite understand why, as they weren't planning anything even to do with her for most of the day. If anything, they used that to distract her long enough, hoping it would keep her there for at least an hour. Because despite what she would like, they needed a way to get more advanced. The simple medical technology that each bed comes with is great but needs an AI to do it. Just to add to that it was taking Ned fourteen days to recover from something that on the Aurora would've taken three days at the most.

And that was just one of the many things. They were getting sick of the fish, and the cold waters proved they needed better suits. The cold water had also proved the night before that they needed better equipment as most electronics they had brought along with them had broken halfway through everything, including their lights. Along with that, they needed stuff for when it gets hotter, another vehicle. This time, not a dinky two-seater submersible.

Stine finished his tea and shoved down the rest of the fish, getting up and going to the suits. They hadn't labeled who's was who's, so Stine grabbed a random one, making sure it wasn't Laura's by not grabbing a wet one. Steve closely followed, leaving a note on Laura's PDA she had left charging on the counter. They both shivered slightly as the cold water filled the airlock, but seeing as not only the base is cold, but also they were in the even colder water for some time before.

They had decided that they would start mainly with the submarine. They had already written blueprints using their combined knowledge of submarines, and now they just needed the materials and the parts to be manufactured from those materials. They were still missing around half of the thing and with no clue as to how the engine would be powered. After all, it was an electric turbine. Apart from those key resources, it was just a few odd things of only a couple kilograms needed.

Stine swam out as far as he could until he found a wreck, and Steve stayed a bit closer to the base, clearing out for all the titanium and scrap metal he could find.

Stine pointed his new flashlight into the wreck. From what he could see, it was one of the main workout chambers located around the ship. There were a few weights and a treadmill. Stine drifted in, looking around for threats. Seeing none, he then looked for more important looking objects and resources. Once again, apart from the treadmill, there wasn't much of any value. There was, however, two other doors.

The other would not open, no matter how hard Stine tried. So, he grabbed his knife and ran it through the door. The tip hit the white surface and glanced off. Stine gave up on the second stab, instead he marking the door by scratching the surface into a crude X. The other door was already cracked down the center and opened halfway before hitting something. Stine tentatively listened, slowly putting his head into the gap. He looked around. The room was trashed, with papers floating around everywhere.

Stine found a few rolls of silicone rubber and a part of what his scanner identified as a bioreactor. As he was leaving the wreck, his flashlight started to flicker a bit. This was fine as he had brought another along, so he continued as if it never happened. Covering about five hundred square meters of space, Stine didn't find anything but was seemed to be an ejection pod. Well, a piece of it, anyway. It was a big tall, very tall fuel tank with an engine on the bottom, seeming to rest on the very tip of the nozzle. The engine looked as though it was about to detach itself from the fuel tanks. Sure enough, once Stine tapped the fuel tank the fuel tank gave a sudden lurch, almost hitting him as it fell.

He looked at the rocket engine. It was perfectly intact, and the place where it had broken off seemed to be a designated place if it were to break. Stine tried lifting it and found it surprisingly easy. Stine set the thruster down and scanned the living shit out of every bit he could. He then slowly carried the thruster back to base, where he was met by a cowering Steve and a yelling Laura. The thruster was too big to fit through the tiny hatch, so Stine had left it right outside. He got a bit of yelling from Laura, as she was a little more than pissed that they hadn't stayed within a couple hundred feet of the base and that they had left her to take care of Ned. After that, they all said hi to Ned, and Stine forgot all about the thruster… Until next morning, that is.


	27. The Benny Hill Stalker

Stine suddenly awoke with a lurch, gasping as he lurched. Steve was pounding on the door.

"I'm up! Jeez, what is it, like four?" Stine yawned, stretching before getting out of bed.

"No, six! Whats with the _ROCKET ENGINE_ outside our airlock?"

Stine thought for a moment, thinking about any sort of anything to do with rockets in the past week, "no idea, lemme see!"

Stine climbed his ladder and moved towards the suits, getting his which he had marked when he got done with being yelled at the night before. Steve already had his suit on, holding the bulkhead open for him. Stine slipped through the relatively small gap, and Steve squeezed in behind him. The hatch was opened, to reveal the engine, sitting in all its glory.

In one moment, it all came back to Stine, "I found that in some random field, the ones with red grass. I'd assume you wanted to research it, so I brought it back."

Steve nodded, setting his feet down on the ground as best as he could, then tried to pick up the thruster. He could barely budge it, and just pushed himself into the ground a bit more. Stine laughed, he picked up the thruster… Or not. It had gotten heavier. Something had happened to increase the weight of it. With only a little inspection, they found it to be the simple problem that the nozzle somehow had melded with a rather large rock. So, Steve just cut the nozzle off the rock, and Stine picked it up, turning it over.

Steve looked around at it for a while, while Stine just looked at it, tilting his head, pretending to check out a motor. They both headed inside once Steve had given it a good look.

When Stine asked him why he was behaving so weirdly, he simply replied with, "Not only am I trying to fill in for Ned, but I've always loved the chemical thrusters. I wonder why we had some on board, though."

They ate very quickly, not talking to each other, then Steve set Stine to work on printing out each hull piece for the sub. Meanwhile, Steve researched everything he could find from his PDA about chemical rockets. Laura came out of her room with some slightly steaming coffee after the seventh piece of the hull was printed off.

"So, Laura. Did you sleep well?" Steve impatiently asked.

"Yeah, act-" Laura answered, getting cut off.

"Well good because Stine brought back a chemical rocket engine," each word came out faster than the last, tumbling over each other.

"Nice. What are we doing, going to send something into orbit?" Laura joked, knowing full well the hull plates were for a submarine, "so we're getting a new sub? Better not be a damn two seater."

Almost the moment Laura finished her coffee, Steve showed her the engine. Moments later, Steve rushed in.

"THE ENGINE IS GONE!" Steve yelled, making Stine jump, dropping the hull plate he was carrying.

Stine picked the hull back up and set it in the pile, with no intention of rushing. He got his suit on, and they headed out. They searched as far as a kilometer out, but couldn't find it. As it started to get darker, they went back home. Much to the excitement of Stine, and disappointment of Steve. As they were almost back, Laura spotted it in a heap of scrap metal… which was collected by the hoard of stalkers above.

Steve swore, and they watched as the stalkers fought each other, trying to win the other stalker's metal. Laura's eyes were on a particular one. It had old scars all over and was even missing an eye. It was being very passive, slowly moving its tail. In a mad dash of energy, it launched itself at the thruster. It snatched it away from the stalker who at the time was fighting with another stalker, swimming quite fast away from the kelp. Steve instantly started to swim after the stalker, and Laura and Stine followed after a second or two. They weren't faster than the stalker until it slowed down about twenty meters from the nearest kelp vine. They started to catch up to it, and it saw this and sped up. However, it seemed to have exhausted itself and kept a steady pace.

Laura sped up, holding her knife in her hand. The stalker saw this, and quickly circled around a boulder, only to be met by Steve on the other side. It then quickly propelled itself over the top of the boulder, only to be confronted with Stine. It seemed to be really wanting the thruster, as it didn't attack, but instead turned around and shot off down a small slope. They ended up chasing the thing for hours until they found it near a small wreck.

It noticed that they noticed, and they noticed that it noticed that they noticed. It tried escaping by swimming directly away but instead rammed into a wall. This turned upwards and went that way, this time. Steve grabbed it by its tail, and it wiggled him off. This had grabbed Laura enough time to arrive in front of it. The stalker went back down at a slight angle, to find Stine. Steve then grabbed the thruster as Laura stabbed the thing in the eye, leaving the knife in as it ran away, leaving the thruster in Steve's hands.

"Jesus that stalker was such a bitch. My legs are so sore from that shit," Laura complained, helping Steve lift the thruster above the shelf they had cornered the stalker at.

"Guys… where are we?" Stine groaned, looking around for familiar landscape.

"Well… there are the dunes in the distance there, there's the Aurora… I think we should be heading…" Steve hesitantly stated, turning to face each place as he said their names.

"That way," Laura said, pointing almost directly opposite from where the sun was setting.

"How did you know though?" Steve asked, looking back at Laura.

"These suits do have UI's, and the base has a small beacon," Laura explained, "honestly, I thought you nerds would know this stuff."

"Hey! Ned and Steve are the nerds, not me!" Stine whined.

Laura rolled her eyes, then set off in the direction of the base. The other two followed, and they got back to the base with the thruster only just after the sun came up. The last one in was Steve, who was strapping the thrusters to the base.

"One of you two are going to check on Ned, I'm going straight to sleep," Laura declared, closing her door.

Steve and Stine looked at each other and seemed to have a mutual agreement. Stine left down his ladder, and Steve grabbed another luxury meal packet. He tossed it on the small tray on the fabricator, and had it warm it up, taking the orange juice off beforehand. He then took it all up, and paused the procedure, waking him up. They talked for half an hour as Ned ate his meal before Stine closed the shutters again and started the procedure again. Stine skipped cleaning up, and went straight to bed, exhausted from everything that had happened that day, and from the lack of sleep.

 **A/N: This was a bit rushed and obviously short, but seeing as of recent I got hit by a stupid texting and driving soccer mom, I got a decent reason not to be writing much. Oh, and along with that, I've gotten quite frustrated with this story. I've got a clear idea of what I want to do, but can't seem to do it well. :/**


	28. Uh-Oh

The base shook. It always vibrated, mostly from the machinery on it, partly from the water and currents hitting it. But, this was shaking, not vibrating. The base's legs started to twist, bending to the offset weight. One crumpled as too much weight was put off to one side, and soon the base started to move. That leg broke off completely, along with others, as the base slid off the legs, it ripped the hull a bit. The base had been built on a very slight hill, so the base continued to slide. It was heavy, though, and created enough friction to stop after sliding a foot. Four other legs had ripped, and one was in loose sand, making a foot wide hole in the sand as it had stayed attached to the base.

The cause? A stalker had slammed into a bit of the base, damaging the walls, along with the already severe damage. Only Stine woke up during it, as his floor had been made extremely bumpy, and he was at the bottom. In fact, because of how the base was built, it was amazing Stine's room didn't hit the side of the tiny amount of space around the room's wall.

Stine climbed his ladder, wanting nothing more but to get out of his room. He lifted himself up, and looked around, into the pitch dark room. He walked along the wall, which he could just barely make out. He expected to find maybe a switch or something, but couldn't find the switch. He started to lean against the wall after clearing the counters, and soon fell into the opening of Steve's room, hitting the door. Stine jumped back up, adrenaline still pumping from the jolt of fear he experienced falling.

He continued and soon came around to a light switch. He flipped it, and looked into the room, only to realize nothing had happened. He flipped it several times, but the lights, nor anything else turned on. He moved back to Laura's door, knocking on it. It was almost a minute before it finally cracked open.

"What do you want? I'm trying to actually get a full night's sleep," Laura groaned, only a tiny sliver of her face visible

"See anything odd behind me?" Stine said, leaning to the side, stretching his hand out.

"No…" Laura said confused and sleepy.

"No lights. The light switch doesn't work, and nor does anything else. On to of that, the base shook. As I think you can guess, this means we have no power and the base is in some sort of reasonably bad condition," Stine explained, realizing Laura was too sleepy to understand.

Laura opened the door faster than Stine could move out of the way, and he ended up being smooshed up against the wall as she hurried out into the room to go and get Steve. As Stine closed the door to slowly move along the wall, he heard a loud thud then a clatter, breaking the eerie silence.

"Ow."

"You should've gone along the wall."

Stine continued, finding Stine's door and knocking almost thirty seconds before Laura finally arrived. Steve opened the door, and Stine explained what was going on. They went slowly around the room, Laura doing the same thing as before, running into twice as many things.

The base made a large movement, sending everybody to the ground.

"Go run!"  
They went for the airlock, but Stine stopped, remembering Ned still asleep. Stine ran along the wall, nearly running into the ladder. He climbed up it and rushed over to Ned's bed. Stine ripped the cover up so hard it fell off. Stine discarded the cover and scooped Ned up, rushing back as fast as he could is the extremely low light to the ladder. Stine hesitated, but then gently let Ned fall down the ladder. He hopped down as, well, and picked Ned back up, who was starting to wake a bit. Stine sprinted across the room where he remembered the airlock but hit the table and a chair. Stine dropped Ned and struggled to find him in the pitch black. With a great movement, the base started to slide a bit more. It accelerated this time and didn't slow.

Stine grabbed Ned and made way for the airlock, only to stumble over the chair that had fallen over. He grasped for Ned as the deafening tearing noise started. Stine's room was being ripped off of the main part as the base was slowed by its resistance. Stine slid across the floor along with Ned and the chairs. Plates and silverware hit Stine, as he was still grabbing for Ned. Stine grabbed Ned's upper arm and started to go up the floor, dragging Ned. As Stine felt the wall, he put Ned on his back. Stine grabbed the side of the bulkhead for the airlock, the base was tossed, throwing Stine and Ned within. Water was flung around with them, flooding in from the hole under Ned's room.

After a short fall, the base hit the bottom of the cliff it fell down. It landed on Ned's and Laura's room, which softened the hit. Stine and Ned weren't as lucky, smashing into the wall. Both had the wind knocked out of them. Stine was dazed and blinked a bit. Right in front of Stine's face, illuminated by the tiny bit of light coming from the sun that must've only just peeked up, was a flashlight. He grabbed it, thinking quickly. He turned it on, spotting Ned only a bit away. He grabbed him and went to the airlock. He went through and started to swim up. He already felt lightheaded, but now he was starting to feel as though something was about to burst out of his skin and mouth. To make it worse, Stine was still far down. Ned was weighing him down too much. Then as Stine was about to drop Ned to come back for him later, he saw Laura in a suit coming down. Stine waved his flashlight around a bit, then dropped it. Laura grabbed his shoulder and turned around, dragging him up. Stine did his best to help swim, but he was too weak. As he could see the surface only meters away, he blacked out.

Bouncing. Swaying. Light?

Stine opened his eyes and looked around. Ned was beside him, and Steve was dozing off sitting up next to Stine, leaning on a bit of metal. At around this point, Stine started to find he was a bit of a numb situation. Stine realized as he was sitting up, they were on the air pump. Stine grabbed Steve's knee and shook him. Stine looked at his arm, seeing an obvious break near his elbow on his lower arm. Stine coughed, waking Steve up at last.

"Stine! Thank god!" Steve yelled, hugging Stine.

"Hold up, what happened to Ned?" Stine responded, patting Steve's back with his left hand.

"Yeah…" Steve looked away a bit, then resumed speaking, "he stopped breathing about an hour ago… His pulse fell away a few minutes after that, so we couldn't do anything, despite attempts at CPR."

They sat there, looking at Ned and listening to the waves slapping the side of the pump.

"So…" Stine said, trailing off.

"Huh?" Steve asked, looking back at Stine.

"So, are we going to, uh, bury him or… something?" Stine suggested.

"That is what Laura spoke a bit about, but we never came to a decision. I don't think we should, we seem to be constantly moving, and what if something digs him up?" Steve rejected the idea.

They nodded and looked at him.

Stine gave a tiny chuckle, and turned to Steve, "perhaps we could put him in a metal coffin, put a battery or powercell on it, a motor and propeller, and send him off."

Steve considered it for a bit, "That doesn't actually sound too bad- better than anything else we could do. I'd love to send him up to space, but we don't have the ability to yet."

"And, by that 'yet', are you suggesting we might actually be able to build a rocket?"

Steve nodded, then looked at the water next to the pump's platform for a bit. There was a loud splash, revealing Laura. She swam over to the ladder, grabbing hold of it before noticing Stine was awake.

"Thank god you aren't like him," Laura said, gesturing to Ned once she climbed the ladder.

She stood in front of Stine, taking her builder out. As Steve was about to ask her what she was doing, she pointed the builder at the small wall next to Steve and held the 'build' button. In the end, it was clear she made a first aid kit cabinet.

"In an hour it'll have one in there. Use it on your arm," Laura told Stine. She jumped right back off, leaving them no time to respond.

"Yeah… I think that's her way of mourning for Ned. In any case, want some chocolate?" Steve informed Stine.

"Chocolate? Since when did we have them?" Stine said, turning back to Steve.

He grabbed a bar from the suit he was wearing and held it out to Stine.

"Laura has been salvaging stuff from the base. Along the trip, she found a small crate. Ended up being absolutely full of these chocolate bars," Steve told Stine.

Stine nodded, accepting the bar. In only a moment, they were both melting some chocolate in their mouths. After a few months of nothing but ever so slightly different tasting fish, the differing taste was amazing. A bit after they both were finished, Laura came back again, a fabricator on her back. She leaned it up against the wall.

"Figure out how to hook this up, Steve. And, Stine, should I try and get your suit?" Laura said.

Stine nodded, and back to the water she went. Steve grabbed the fabricator and struggled to lift it, but nonetheless carried it near the small built-in battery with LCD's displaying how much of it was used. There was an assortment of plugs on the front of it, near the bottom. Only a few seconds and the fabricator was powered.

"Hey, Stine? Want some fish?" Steve asked.

"Oh, I suppose," Stine replied.

Steve dived into the water, and about a minute later he was back. He held two peepers in one hand and used the other to climb back up. He tossed both onto the fabricator's tray and fiddled with the item menu for a moment before he tapped the right one, and the peepers got cooked by the lasers. Steve tossed the larger one down to Stine, and he caught it. Steve dug in, but Stine kinda just stared at it for a bit. He took a bite, and after only two seconds had consumed every bit of meat on the fish.

"Jeez you were hungry. In any case, what do you think we should do? Laura says that it isn't going to be smart to make a base, after we know that can happen if we don't do maintenance on it, and we know we can't really do that with what we have. I suggested a boat," Steve told Stine.

"A boat sounds nice actually, but won't we have to build it mostly by hand?" Stine asked.

"I mean, not entirely by hand, but it'd be mostly."

They sat there thinking for a bit, Stine glancing to Ned.

Laura broke the surface and the silence. I'd say it'd probably be best. Afterall, I'm not going to feel very safe in a building for a while," Stine decided at last.

Steve shrugged, and they sat there in silence for what seemed to be half an hour. Laura suddenly broke the surface, as well as the silence. She started to backstroke over to them, carrying two big duffel bags on her stomach. Steve leaned over the water and picked one up as Laura got close enough. Laura tossed the other one up onto the platform.

Right before she swam off, she added, "Ned is going to start to get rotten. We need to figure out what to do with his body."

Steve opened the bag, and looked through, "well, we got all the stuff to make the hull. Plenty of metal, a welder, a builder, and a flashlight."

Steve pulled everything but the metal out onto the pump. The medical cabinet beeped twice, signaling it had fabricated a first aid kit, in which Steve snatched it out and tossed it to Stine.

"By the way, what in this very world did you use to make me numb? Cause it's starting to wear off and I swear to god I'm about to scream," Stine told him as he clicked open the first aid kit, "ah, good a sling."

"It was from one of the first aid kits we had left, but it was missing everything else but a roll of ripped up bandages."

Stine put his arm in a sling with the help of Stine and followed that up with three different shots.

"FUCKING CHRIST," screamed Stine as the third one was done.

Steve snickered and Stine threw a battery at him. Soon, the pain went away from even the shots and Stine was perfectly able to even swim, however slowly. Stine and Steve stared at each other again, not knowing exactly what to feel, or do.

"Once Laura comes back around, I'm going to go help her now that you're capable. And, before that, we're going to discuss what next," Steve finally decided.

As if on cue, Laura grabbed onto the ladder, "toss me a bag."

Steve shoved the now nearly empty duffel bag over to her, where she dumped a mix of metals.

"And this," Laura started, reaching into her pocket, "is something I found. The water around it was hot, and it's red hot."

It was the cylinder that Ned and Stine had found a long time ago. Stine distantly- so distantly he felt as though his memory was tricking him, thought that he may have thought it might just be some weird part from a power generator at the time, something on the Aurora. And, even if Stine's memory was false, it's what he believed now.

"And this box I can't open."

Laura tossed a small steel box onto the platform. Stine again remembered this- they found it right around the time they met Steve and Laura. It was in the submarine Ned had discovered. Stine gave another attempt at opening it up, and even Steve gave a try. No such luck. Laura was just about to leave before Stine caught her.

"Wait! Laura!"

She turned around, seemingly annoyed that she had to talk about more than basic information, "what?"

"We wanted to know your opinion of using a boat as not only a base but as a way of crossing long distance."

"I don't care- and, the base is nearly scrapped for everything," Laura told them, dropping back into the water.

They both shrugged, and Steve checked the next bag. Another set of tools, a full suit, some, odd and water, along with a rather large lighter. Steve set the bags next to Stine, which when set end to end was the full length of Stine. Steve worked on the platform, extending it about three more square meters. It was big enough that Steve could start working on the boat, which was exactly what he was going to do.

Well, tomorrow. Afterall, Steve had seen the sun set for the third time since he last slept.

 **A/N: Currently in Florida, doing stuff everyday. I'll hopefully have another one out soon, but school IS starting, so I gotta dedicate time to crappy ass homework.  
Oh yeah, and I suppose this chapter was pretty important.**


	29. I have a great idea

Laura slowly woke, not being eased into consciousness, but instead thrown. Literally. Laura hit the water and quickly panicked to right herself and get above the surface. She breathed in, finding the air she breathed cold. She blinked, wiping her eyes. She looked around. The Aurora was smoking with a soft glow, and the pump was lit by a small light near the main control. Ned's body was next to Stine, who was next to Steve, who used to be next to LAura until she rolled enough to fall. Laura felt nicely refreshed and the sun was just coming up, so she decided to wake the other two.

"Guys! Up, common! Time to get working," Laura shouted, swimming around to grab her things.

Stine rolled over a bit, but Steve snapped right up.

"I know what we should do with Ned's body. Make a small boat, only big enough for him and a tiny bit extra. Then, attach an array of powercells onto the boat, and throw on a motor. Perfect, right? Mostly Stine's idea," Steve said, grabbing his own things, "get up you fat lazy bum. Common, Stine."

Stine stirred this time, and sat up, looking around, "it's still night… why did you guys wake me up?"

"It's morning idiot. Get up, we're making a damn boat."

Laura was already off to scrap the rest of the base, and Steve had somehow made a small pile of sheet metal from the fabricator in the twenty seconds he had been awake.

Stine slowly stood up and rubbed his eyes as he walked across the platform only to fall off into the cold water. Stine resurfaced, sputtering. Steve just simply snorted a bit, trying to not laugh as he went back to printing off the plates. Stine started on the boat, welding up the plates.

"So how many millimeters do you think we'll weld into these sheets?" Stine d as he finished putting four together.

"I think these welders can weld fifteen millimeters underwater and twenty millimeters in the air, and I think only ten in a vacuum," Steve told him, stopping the fabricator.

"So right through this sheet. And, why did you print just thin sheets? We'll need stronger stuff," Stine responded, grabbing another sheet.

"I've made about four times as much as we'll need to make it watertight, but we'll be making ten times more. Know why?" Steve told him slowly, carrying a quarter of the sheets over to Stine.

"Oh god, why!"

Steve got to work, helping Stine weld up the sheets. By noon they had used one-eighth of their sheet metal but had run out of room on the platform. It was a problem that Steve had prepared for. He simply tossed a sack full of air he had made earlier under the platform he made the night before, then grabbed the two-inch pieces he had used the night before. Then, they had fifteen square feet of space more.

"Alright, this is the point where we need to design this. Are you good at designing?" Steve said, wiping the sweat off of his forehead.

"Not at all," Stine said, shaking his head as he ran his welder along the edges of two sheets.

Steve returned to the pump area and grabbed his PDA, salvaged by Laura while Stine was still out. Stine stopped and watched. The sun was coming right against the horizon by the time Steve and Stine had designed the entire thing, and they quickly went to work. They went as fast as possible, but as they were working with super hot welders without a welding mask, that wasn't very speedy. They had to stop due to the dark before they could complete the first layer of the hull. To make that worse, they had gotten close to the edge again. Laura had come back as the very last of the sun disappeared. She arrived with four duffel bags, three full of the metal they would need, and the rest various items and systems taken from the base.

She also told them that the base was now no more than a bit of scrap metal at the bottom of a cliff. Because if it were an Earth day, it would only be about 11:30 AM, they would take a nice noon nap. Afterall, there isn't a point on staying up during the night when the brain is already trying to get you to sleep.

Stine woke, soaked. He shot up from his nightmare and looked around. Ned's body was next to him. Somehow, it wasn't rotting. A fart smell had started to really come up, but that was it. Steve was on Stine's other side, and Laura was on the other side of Steve. It was raining. And, it wasn't just rain, it was a thunderstorm. Lightning crackled in the sky and even struck the Aurora multiple times. Stine could make out the sun. It had probably been up for an hour. Stine shook Steve until he woke up. Steve shivered and looked up into the rain.

"I've never once seen rain on this planet," Steve said, looking at the clouds, and the fog, "I mean, I've seen the cloud with the thick fog under them. But that was far away."

Soon, the two were back to work. They had left Laura sleeping. After all, she had been doing a bit over half the work when they should have split it into thirds. They had extended the platform quite a bit and were done with the first layer of the hull before Laura woke up.

"Rain?" she said, only seconds after waking.

"Yup. Now, can you help us figure out how in the hell we are supposed to attach one sheet of metal to another?" Steve asked, having tossed a piece of metal moments earlier in frustration.

"Dunno, maybe just put it up on the other sheet and weld the corners first, then the rest?" Laura suggesting as she stretched.

Steve grabbed a sheet and laid it on the other sheet, making sure it fit seamlessly. Stine realized what Steve was trying to do and grabbed his welder to help. He welded the four corners, and Steve let go of the sheet after ten seconds of waiting. It held, so Steve gave Laura a thumbs up as she dived into the water yet again.

"Do it now?" Stine asked once he was sure Laura wasn't coming back up soon.

"What? Do what?" Steve asked.

"Make Ned's coffin? The idea I had earlier?" Stine told him, welding a piece of metal right next to the sheet they had worked together to put on.

"Oh! Yeah, I suppose we should do it sooner rather than later."

They made a small, small boat. Very simple, using the sheet metal. Steve got to work attaching the four powercells Laura had salvaged onto the coffin, and Stine went back to the boat. Soon Steve was done, so they switched jobs, as Stine was getting tired of doing the same thing over and over. Soon, both the coffin and a quarter of the second layer was done. They would wait until Laura came back to see her opinion on the idea, and until the next sunrise to let the coffin go. Until then, Ned stayed on the platform and they kept working on the boat. They had made it quite well and had even carved out a hole with their knives just big enough for them to squeeze through with a bit of equipment. That was where they were putting the door, anyway.

The door was barely enough, so they usually just went in and dragged their stuff in after. As they worked, they had to be extremely careful. Not only on what they were doing but where they stepped. The boat was still quite flimsy and if stepped on with enough space between the bottom of the boat and the platform, your leg would rip right through. Welding was getting a little hazardous because of this, but even more so because of a large amount of water collecting in the boat. The rain didn't stop, even as the sun shone- directly overhead. The two did all the second layer plating apart from where the water was. They didn't want any water to get sealed in between the layers. Laura came back as Steve and Stine were hurriedly dumping out water using old water bottles. Laura dumped the things she was carrying and went to help them. With all three of them working on it the water was gone. Stine constructed a silicone tarp using the creepvine seeds Laura had brought with her, and they threw it over the top of the boat.

Once they were sure the tarp wouldn't fall due to pooling water, Stine and Steve talked about Stine's "roaming coffin" idea to Laura. A bit of convincing and she agreed, making it clear she didn't entirely like the idea.

"So, how about some dinner?" Laura asked, sitting on the platform.

"That sounds good about now," Steve agreed.

Stine, without hesitation, dived right into the water. Steve stared blankly at the point where Stine disappeared. Laura just shrugged and grabbed a salted peeper from a duffel bag. Stine soon came back, with some fish. They sat there for a while, eating their fish. Laura was the first to start, so naturally was the first to finish. She sat up and brushed the salt off her fingers.

"So, what are you off to now?" Steve asked, still chewing his boomerang.

Laura shrugged, "I'm really just searching."

Laura hopped off the platform, and Steve finished his fish. Stine was finished soon after, so they got back to work after a small drink from their water bottles.

By sun down, the fourth layer was on, and Stine and Steve were making final checks on the coffin-boat. Stine had another great idea earlier and had attached extra powercells along with a reasonably ranged antenna. Stine then attached a camera to it all, so they could look around Ned's coffin. Laura finally arrived, and the sun was about to dip itself into the water.

"For these past months, he was a great and brave friend. Although we shared some bad experiences, we also shared quite a few good ones. I now hope that he rests in peace, finding himself in a greater place," Stine said, on the verge of tears as they stood over the coffin, staring at Ned's completely pale face.

The other two nodded, and both Stine and Laura grabbed the coffin and lifted it up. Steve dropped into the water and helped the two guide it softly into the water. It floated quite well, and everything was on. Stine welded the top on from the platform, and Laura grabbed the remote control for it. When they were all back onto the platform, Laura turned the motor on and onto half power. They watched it as it moved slowly at first, then accelerated. Ned's coffin soon went out of sight into the top of the setting sun, and they stood there, watching the very point that the glittering coffin had disappeared from sight. Using the monitor installed into the remote control for the motor, they watched the camera. It was on a controllable swivel, and so they looked around. The Aurora was becoming smaller and smaller as the coffin got farther away. Laura increased the speed all the way, and they watched as the Aurora disappeared under the horizon. They watched it all the way through the night, where they could still only just see with the planet's second moon shining down.

Laura woke, yawned and stretched. She was laying on a comfortable bed, big enough for two other people to lay down next to her, and then some. The sheets were white and fluffy. The room she was in was spacious and mostly white. The walls were round, and there was a door across the room from her bed. There was a white wardrobe near the door, a mirror over a white desk, and a gray nightstand next to her bed. Laura pulled the covers off her and swung her feet around. She didn't feel tired, or that pain in her leg.

She set her feet carefully onto the smooth floor and examined herself. She was naked, apart from underwear and a nightgown. She didn't have that one scar from fighting a stalker on her shoulder, and her left ear was still there. She got up and off from the bed and walked around the room. There was a soft fluffy carpet on most of the floor, saving her feet from the cold metal floor. Laura opened the wardrobe and saw a bunch of her old clothes, including the two sets of "captains uniform" she had on the Aurora.

She put one on, just to have the feeling of being naked in an unfamiliar place go away. She then walked in front of the door. She breathed in deeply, and let it all out slowly. Then, she opened the door with one press of the finger. Laura looked out into the hall, half expecting everything around her to fade away as she woke up. But it didn't, so she continued looking out into the halls. Nobody was in it, and only the emergency lighting was on. Laura walked down the left side, faintly remembering that was the way to the bridge.

After what felt like an hour or two of walking, she got to the lift door. She pressed the up button, and it made an echoing ding. The doors opened and she walked into the lift. It climbed higher and higher and very quickly reached the bridge. Laura hesitantly walked into the enormous room. She kept walking, the hum of machinery the only sound in the room. She sat down in her chair and looked out the front of the ship. And that was when she woke up.

Laura sighed as she woke up, and looked around. She was loosely holding the remote control for the coffin-boat. The monitor showed a tiny edge of the coffin-boat and an open sea, mist cutting off the horizon. Laura turned the motor down to seventy-five percent and shrugged off Stine. She struggled to remember the dream she had just had. She ate breakfast while watching the other two. Once she was done with breakfast, she woke the other two up.

"Ughhhhh…" Stine groaned, rolling over onto Steve, who had sat up.

Steve pushed Stine off of his lap, and got up, "So any plan, or is it just staying to what we were doing?"

"No plan. I was going to print off some metal sheets for you two," Laura told him, stretching once more to get the final stiffness out of her joints.

Stine crawled up Stine, using him to stand straight. Steve grabbed a salted peeper from the food bag Laura brought, and a water bottle. Stine did the same, scarfing both down. Steve calmly ate as Laura started printing off metal. Unlike Steve, she got it to stack right onto the fabricator tray, and all she had to do was press a button twenty times, then carry that stack near the boat door. Stine grabbed several sheets and walked into the boat without a welder. Steve shook his head and continued eating.

"Well, I've just made two hundred and sixty plates. I'm off to grab some stuff and look around," Laura said as Steve finished his meal and Stine finally found his welder.

"Alright, see you in a bit."

Laura hopped into the ocean. She started to swim towards a random direction, trying her best to not go in one she'd already gone to. Laura observed everything below her, looking out for anything valuable looking. She stopped by the surface for a refill before heading down a steep cliff. The cliff was jagged and completely black as if made entirely from volcanic rock. She couldn't see the other sides of the cliff. As far as she knew, the side beside her could be the only side there was.

Once she tapped the bottom, she asked the AI in her suit how much oxygen she had left.

"About forty-five seconds."

Laura went back to the surface. She wasn't in a rush, that was just a bit too close for the total trip back up. She returned, this time only going far enough to see the sea floor. She swam along, looking at the black rock jutting out above the white sand. As she swam she could spot some metal from the outer hull of the Aurora in the foggy distance. Laura took out her knife, in case anything was hiding around or behind the metal. The metal seemed to be a chunk of the Aurora that split into half once it hit the floor. Laura heard her oxygen alarm and proceeded to swim back to the surface, watching below her for anything rising up with her.

Laura was soon back down to the chunks, but couldn't find any creatures. That was good and meant that Laura could put her knife away. In the cold, her flashlight had already stopped working, so she didn't bother pulling that out. The chunk included a lot of armor and a couple small rooms. If she had to guess, this used to be somewhere around the drive room. Laura swam through a small tear in a corner of one room. She looked around, trying to find really anything that looked useful.

There was a large piece of what looked to be an emergency no-power transceiver. She swam over to it and tried to pick it up. Even in the water, it was really heavy. She could only just swim back to the boat while carrying it. She got a close encounter with a stalker, but luckily it decided a different piece of metal was more important. When she surfaced to climb up onto the platform, she could see Stine and Steve working on the boat again.

"Guys, a little help?" Laura grunted, grabbing onto the ladder.

Stine looked over his shoulder while welding and Steve jumped, dropping the sheet of metal he was carrying into the boat. Steve helped Laura up onto the platform, before realizing that she was carrying something. Stine finished the last corner and hurried over to heave the extremely heavy antenna from the water. Steve helped, and with a small push from Laura, the antenna was standing upright on its three and a half legs. Stine helped Laura up as Steve examined the antenna.

"This is in bad shape. Next time, try to get something in a better condition," complained Steve.

"How the fuck is that my fault?"

"It's not," Steve said, poking at the coil, "I'm just asking."

"And how am I supposed to control that shit?"

Steve sighed and grabbed Stine as he walked back to the boat.

"Get me two powercells and a roll of wire. I have a great idea."

 **A/N: Wow I've been real productive recently… Am I okay? Have I been bitten by a radioactive spider while in Florida?**

 **In any case, I've been really worried by something. The lack of feedback I'm getting. I love that I've been successful enough on the "first" story I've posted on here to have 12 people following this story, and 12 favorites. But I feel like I've been doing something wrong and the only reason people continue reading is that they enjoy my story, and hate my writing. If that is the case, tell me what you don't like about. I'm not saying it'll change instantly or really noticeable, or even at all. I just want to know what I should work on if I want my work to be really enjoyed.**


	30. The Sunbeam

Stine handed the freshly fabricated copper wire to Steve, who then coiled it around the center silver beam. He then lead the final bit into the "receiver" which would pick up the signal and give the antenna power to respond back. Instead of leaving it a "no-power" antenna, Steve modified it to run off of a solar panel and two powercells. It could pick up transmissions from all the way at the edge of this solar system and could send a minute long message for an hour before it needed to get fully recharged. It already had a small console that ran off of a tiny, tiny solar panel and battery. So, all Steve had to do is get Laura to fiddle with the console to see if she could create a message. Afterall, Steve was mostly guessing with a lot of this stuff, but once he scanned it and fed that data into his PDA, he knew it'd work, and how far.

"Laura!" Steve said, snapping her out of whatever daydream she was having.

Laura looked to, him, then back over to the horizon, "What?"

"Can you help me with this real quick?" Steve asked, standing up from his kneeling position.

Laura walked over and looked at the antenna.

Stine pointed to the console, "try to send out a message. I can't figure it out."

Laura nodded and sat down in front of it. Steve then helps Stine on the boat. They were already on their final layer, and both Steve and Stine were stoked. Laura just seemed to be happy to move.

Three days of hard, hard work from all three and they were ready to slide the boat out into the water. The catch: they don't know how to move a metal boat that weighs in at nearly a ton just by themselves, who could probably push five hundred pounds at a max.

"We could use a beam to get some leverage. Might be able to just slide off," Stine suggested, looking at the boat, being pounded by the near-hail rain.

Laura glanced at the small wall they were hiding behind, "No, it doesn't have anything to slide off. No ramp."

Steve stayed quiet, tapped his foot against the ground, holding his chin with his hand. They sat there, looking at their beached boat. Hadn't even touched the ocean yet.

"We might," Laura started. ", be able to just collapse the platform. We won't need it."

Stine didn't need to question it. He tossed on his helmet and went into the sludge and started to hack at the platform with his knife. Steve looked like he was about to tell him to stop, but he just shook his head and joined him. Laura joined in by trying to start from the middle. With the three of them, it still took six knives and three hours. And, to add, lots of blisters and cuts. The boat's weight pushed the two platforms apart, creating a ramp on each side.

The boat fell into the ocean, the pump side getting set aside lightly, while the other side cut from the pump shot out into the air. They all boarded the boat. The airlock drained and they continued into the kitchen and living space. It actually had a sink with a filter and an electric stove. There was a ladder off to the deck and a door to the bedroom. Laura headed straight for the bedroom, but Stine laid down onto the sofa made from plant fiber. Steve stood around for a bit, then went up the ladder. It was a room with a small seat in front of the literal steering wheel in the center and a door to the actual but small deck. But where is the toilet? Branched off the bedroom, and every last bit of storage was either in the cabinets above the counter, or under the living space, accessed by a pipe, or a panel Steve made and cut out himself.

Stine went and dragged the antenna into the control room, saving it from the pounding sludge. Steve then got everything else and packed it all into the boat. They were ready to go, so before they did, they set up the antenna on the deck and had it repeat Laura's message. Steve drove the ship east from the Aurora, ending up twenty-two kilometers from it. Stine took over as Steve slept, and when Steve woke up, they were nearly thirty kilometers from the Aurora. But, the Aurora was half a kilometer tall, meaning it could be seen from about sixty kilometers if Stine was correct in the "napkin math" he did before they left the pump.

They all slept for the other hour that it was still reasonably dark, and when they got up, Laura found a transmission on the antenna.

"GUYS! RESCUE!" Laura practically screamed.

The two rushed up the ladder and out onto the sludgy deck, and Laura played the message on the speakers.

" _Aurora, this is Sunbeam again. We just picked up a massive debris field at your location. I didn't know how bad... how many of you... I didn't know. We are now en route to your location. We're going to bring you home. Sunbeam out."_

Steve was just about to speak, but Stine shushed him, "Hasn't stopped."

Somebody said something, in which the person who was just talking to them raised his voice and moved away from the microphone, " _What else can I say? We're a six-seater and we aren't even slightly equipped to handle this? Our pilot last attempted a planet landing in the Academy simulator? It's a bad situation, but so are all the alternatives."_

That's when the antenna ran out of battery.

Now Steve could talk, "so their pilot hasn't landed on a planet apart from the sims, and it is so little for them to land on. So…? Any ideas on what to do?"

"Sit here and wait for more transmissions," both Stine and Laura agreed.

Steve nodded. They had enough food for a full week without hunting, so all they had to do is make sure nothing breaks, goes bad or runs out of power. Stine got to work on connecting the antenna to the ship's batteries, while Steve and Laura got to work on adding extra solar panels on top of the ship.

Soon it was night, but that didn't stop them. They were going to make sure that if they had to, they could go halfway across the planet within a few days. That meant power upgrades, upgrades to the propeller, and to the motor. It even meant upgrades to the hull and lots of hunting! For the time that they were waiting for the location of the landing site, they had a lot of things to finish off. Before they went to bed the next 24 hour day, they got another transmission.

" _Sunbeam, broadcasting to all survivors of the Aurora. We've covered more than half the distance, so hold on in there. We're scanning the planet for dry land as we speak. You couldn't have picked a less convenient parking spot, but we'll be in touch as soon as we have a landing site for you. Sunbeam out."_

"Finally managed to turn off the transmission correctly," was the only comment.

A full day later and no messages. They had far enough food for three weeks, and enough power to recharge the batteries each day, even with the advanced motor running, which meant they'd be going about as fast as a car on a relatively slow highway. They could get anywhere on their hemisphere within about two days of near constant driving. They were currently located near one of the few pieces of land, so that was already a start. On their third night of waiting, they got another signal.

" _Aurora, it's Sunbeam. We've made orbit, and scans have found a landing site on the planet that's only rated hazardous. It's our best shot. We've sent you the coordinates. We'll be there in two days' time. Cross your fingers the weather holds, and don't leave us waiting. Sunbeam out."_


	31. The Precursor Gun

"Why can't we send a message?" Stine asked arms crossed sitting on the fiber sofa.

"Because, at their range, it would take so much power we may fry your pathetic excuse for a fix, or use so much power we might have to wait to recharge enough to start moving again. We've done this already, shut up about it. Steve is driving, and your turn is coming up," Laura said, cooking a large clump of a creepvine on the stove.

Stine grumbled, but just then the ship stopped so he rolled his eyes and went up to the control room to drive. Steve went past Laura, straight to his bed. Stine drove for two hours before they arrived at the island.

Stine jumped down the ladder, "Aliens!"

Laura looked up from her creepvine, "Alright. Nothing new?"

"No, big artificial structure by em!"

Stine woke up Steve and they hurried onto the island. Sure enough, there was a large lumpy but very fine rectangle, with a big tower on the ocean side of it. They walked up to what seemed to be the entrance. There was a closed up console to the side, but it was wide open. There were sandy footprints leading inside before fading.

Steve gulped down the apple sized lump in his throat then stepped inside. No alarms. No voices. Nothing. Stine and Laura followed him in and they cautiously explored the room, until Stine found something. Or rather, his PDA reported on its constant local scan.

"Scans indicate this structure is composed of a metal alloy with unprecedented integrity. No matches found in the local database. Performing structural analysis... Analysis of the patterns on the walls cannot ascertain whether their purpose is aesthetic or functional. Further data required."

Then, Laura's found something as she really found something, "These alien cubes each store the equivalent energy of a small nuclear detonation. The alien technology is able to keep the stored atoms in a permanently stable state, however, under the right conditions the reaction could be re-catalyzed and the energy released in a controlled manner. They were likely used as batteries, storing power generated at the main reactor and then transported wherever they were needed. Assessment: Possible source of escape-velocity energy?"

"Oh-my-god," Laura stuttered, nearly dropping the ion crystal.

"A damn nuke?"

"Suppose."

They continued, going deeper and deeper.

"Your best probability of interfacing with this facility is achieved by accessing the control room in the lower section."

So, they started looking for big stairs down, or maybe even a lift. What they did not expect was for Laura to trip and fall through what used to look like solid wall, but now open air, and down a long shaft. Stine and Steve rushed over and looked down, only to be pulled it as well. They were calmly and gently lowered down on a thick stream of golden particles. Each one of their PDA's said something, but they couldn't hear it.

Once they got to the bottom, Steve's PDA said something extra.

"Scans indicate the facility's control room lies beyond this doorway."

The door was open, and inside they could see a man, with a beard bigger and more unkempt than even Steve's, slumped against a wall.

Laura rushed towards the man, and the others followed suit. When the man heard the footsteps he looked up. His face lit up as he saw them and he rushed up and hugged Laura. Stine decided to join in, and to not feel awkward, Steve joined.

With a horrible, croaky voice, the man spoke, "you do not believe. How. How happy I am to see another living human."

"And it's great to see another survivor."

After that was over, the man explained what the control room was, and where it was.

"But, there's a problem that's going to kill the crew of the sunbeam." The man, who had forgotten his name, but remembered his last name, Goddan, sighed. "In the control room, there's a big red button. I hit it, wanting nothing more than to disable it. But, something wrapped around my hand, and it took a sample of my blood, told me I was infected, and the infected could not turn off the gun."

"Wait, the gun is in here? Where? Let's just blow it up with an ion crystal!" Laura said, patting the man on his back.

"I wish it was that simple. You are currently standing in the gun. This stuff can't be damaged by and futile human means, or even a 'nuke'. It must be DISABLED. But, we're all infected, so we can't. The Sunbeam-" Goddan was cut off by Stine.

"We might not all be infected. No symptoms of any sickness have shown on us," Stine told him.

The man slammed his fist against the floor, the sound echoing and making the three recoil, "THE VERY MOMENT YOU TOUCHED THIS CURSED WATER, YOU'VE BEEN DEAD. It's been about five or four months. Lost count, too busy building up my tech, thinking everything was fine. I've read about this disease, downloaded the files off of a few other bases. Symptoms appear about a year after on most test subjects. First, comes the messed up body heat, bouncing from too low to too high. Then nausea, stuffy nose, sore throat, and headaches. You start coughing blood, and if you don't die then, you lose your sight, then all your other senses, until the last one left is feeling, and then you die. In a human, it's stated, it took on average only four to six months. We all are right in the range of starting. I've already got stage THREE! My PDA estimates only two and a half weeks left for me if I don't starve or dehydrate before. And-"

"You've worked yourself up. We'll be off this plan-"

"NO, WE WON'T!" Goddan shrieked, "THE SUNBEAM MINE AS WELL HAVE NEVER COME!"

Goddan took out something and pointed it at himself. He held something down and it started scanning him. He showed the screen to the three.

"INFECTED." The Goddan's PDA said loudly. "Two point five weeks left."

Then Goddan scanned Laura, "INFECTED. Four point seven weeks left."

Then at Stine, "INFECTED. Two point nine weeks left."

Then at Steve, "INDECISIVE. ERROR."

Goddan looked at the scanner, then at Steve. He held it down again, and again, and again. "INDECISIVE. INDECISIVE. INDECISIVE. ERROR."

Steve instantly grabbed his helmet and put it on. He looked at the others and shrugged.

"Come here. NOW," Goddan said, tugging lightly on his arm as though he was made of foam.

Steve was lead down a long hall, another lift, Laura, and Stine awkwardly following.

"Scans indicate the facility's control room lies beyond this doorway."

They walked into a grand room with ion crystals all about and a few weird purple things. Goddan helped Steve up the very large step up to a pillar with an eye at eye level, and a big red button in front of Steve. Goddan pressed it and put his hand in front of the eye. Like a snake, it coiled itself around his wrist. It poised for attack, then sunk in, going back out in the matter of a second. It retracted, releasing Goddan.

"WARNING: Infected individuals may not disable the enforcement system. This planet is under quarantine."

Steve put his arm in front of the eye after hitting the red button. They waited a moment, and the same thing happened to Steve. When it retracted, it didn't speak. In fact, it didn't speak for a full ten minutes before anything more happened.

"Quarantine enforcement platform disabled."

They all celebrated and hurried to watch the sunbeam gracefully land onto the surface. It took about an hour of complete and udder bored waiting, but soon there were a few signs of them coming down.

"Attention," Said all four of their PDA's at once. "-Patching in a local broadcast from a "Sunbeam"."I don't Believe it, there is actually people down there! Aurora crash survivors! We have four PDA signatures! I don't know how even one of you walked away from that wreck, let alone survived since then, but we'll be happy to bring all of you onboard and hightail it into Alterra space. Stand behind something, we're approaching the landing site now. Breaking atmosphere in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…"

A soft tiny rumbled started, and they all looked around for a streak in the sky. They spotted it and started at the crimson orange. Soon that rumble turned into more of a shake in the air, and the streak began to come closer, but fade. They all moved away from the flat spot on the beach, as the ship came closer. It was still in the upper atmosphere, but it was best not to get caught in a thruster.

"What is that. No, not them, the RED spike… From. From the planet?"

All of their smiles faded as they heard this. The Sunbeam started to enter the thicker atmosphere. They knew because the rumble turned into a shriek. The streak of plasma was slowly thinning, but the sound definitely wasn't.

"That one- MOVE!"

The streak went sliding to the left, diving faster. Suddenly, it was as if the sun was taking a visit to see them. Their eyes were instinctively shut, but not before the beam of pure energy was already burned into their vision. Even then, the light was so powerful their eyelids only offer little protection and turned the green light into a red. Nearly each one of them put their hands up to shield their faces and as the heat washed over them- scratch that, the heat plowed into them like a 26-year-old football player does into a crowd of 6-year-olds.

Their skin boiled, blistering because of the heat. They started to scream in pain, and an ungodly noise started up. It was as if their ear drums were about to explode. It was so much that they couldn't even process the sound, the impossible sound, twelve million times worse than the light. The heat was worse though. They were being cooked alive, literally. The small mountain they were under started to collapse due to the pressure of the sound. Then, after all of that was done, it had only been a second. But the beam was gone, along with the sound. Completely gone. Even the heat was faded away so quickly it practically didn't matter. Parts of the sand at the beach was now glass, and the sky was clear of the stormy clouds from earlier.

All but one, Goddan, had passed out from the pain. He hesitantly opened his eyes. He was in the far back. He reached for his PDA, just barely pulling it towards him. Goddan could hear clattering, thumps and things sliding around through the speaker.

"He-hello?" He spoke, worried that had been stripped from him. He coughed up a bit of blood onto some glass, listening closely to the speaker, as the noise was still horrible ringing in his ears. In fact, he didn't even hear his own voice, when he spoke.

"PULL UP FOR FUCKS SAKE! PULL THE DAMN STICK TO YOU AND UP!" Goddan heard faintly underneath the ringing.

He saw the Sunbeam, still rolled over, though not as much, closing in on the water. Suddenly, the nose flipped to forty degrees from the ground, almost stopping the thing.

Goddan couldn't hear anything, so instead, he spoke into the PDA, "I can't hear. We're all… All out. Horrib… Horribl…"

Goddan nearly puked onto the PDA but instead aimed it near where he had just spat blood. He turned over, letting the cool sand help soothe his arms. He was already dead. Just like his son. But instead, he died due to a pathetic disease. Not to the crash. And that was when Goddan passed out.

 **A/N: Took a tiny bit of inspiration on my writing from "** **coincidencless** "' **s "In Charge" about the same game, Subnautica. It's great, over ten times better than my plot, and my writing. Seriously. Check that shiz out, if you haven't.**


	32. Safety

Steve started to wake up. The last thing he had remembered was the world crashed down upon him, and the ground shaking as if it was about to split open. He looked around, his vision slightly plastered with a long gray spot, where he couldn't see. He looked around and found himself in a small chair. He was in a white room, a wide glass windshield in the front, where in front of that there was a fluffy chair and the pilot's controls. Next, to that, there were two other chairs, one with a bunch of controls, another with only a few. There were two other seats to the wall and one big one in the center. People occupied all of these seats and were focused on the consoles in front of them. Steve paid attention to what was beyond the glass window. It was a bunch of open seas, with a bit of glass ridden sand. The sky was dark, but not nighttime. You couldn't see any nebula or stars yet.

Steve looked beside him. There weren't any other chairs, he was alone with the crew of the sunbeam. As he realized that, he realized a second thing. He was numb, completely. It was an awkward situation, at best. As he came to be fine with this, he realized yet ANOTHER thing. And this was worrying. He didn't hear a single noise. He made a small note with his voice. Nothing. Though, it did get a response from the man in the large central chair. He looked behind him and smiled. The man got up and walked over to him, speaking. Steve shook his head and put a finger up, signaling for him to be quiet. He did so and seemed very confused. Steve nearly got up to try and find something to write with but saw that there were none. He pointed to his ears, then made an 'X' with his two index fingers.

That cleared up the man's confusion, but it did make him look very worried. The man returned to his chair for just a moment, but came back with… Steve's PDA! Steve grabbed it as soon as he could and booted it up. It booted in emergency mode, oddly enough. Steve went and opened up a text document, and began typing. He read it over and showed it to the man. Steve would've talked, but he had no confidence in how well he could speak if he couldn't hear himself.

Steve had written, 'who are you? Where are the others? Why are we still on this hell hole?'

The man handed it back, 'I am Avery Quinn, captain of trading ship Sunbeam. They are in the only place that we could safely store them, the freezer. We turned the temperature up, don't worry. We learned that everybody but you had a disease, so we did our best to contain it. We are figuring out how to get out of here without being shot at. Last shot fried all of our sensors and sensitive equipment.'

After Steve finally was done reading that, he nodded, and handed the PDA back. He watched as Avery typed away, and observed the outside. Avery waved his hand in front of Steve, catching his attention.

'And, do you know anything about 'Ned Goddan'?'

Steves heart sank all the way to the ocean floor below and kept going. He froze. He didn't know what to do, so his body reclaimed itself, as his mind wandered off. He started to quietly weep, still just looking at, 'Ned Goddan'. His body and his mind snapped together as Avery waved his hand right in front of his face. Steve took the PDA, and began typing, trying to hit the right keys without getting water on the screen.

'I met him about three months after the crash. He recently died due to our home collapsing down a cliff. We sent him off in a boat.'

Avery said something, then gave Steve the PDA back. He instantly went to the front of the ship, and obviously started to speak to the three in the front. He came back and typed in one sentence.

'We'll save him, which direction?'

Steve snapped to attention, even his tears stopped, 'Southwest''

Avery nodded, and ran back to his chair, shouting. Steve felt the ship vibrate, and lift off only a few meters. The nose of the ship spun around, aiming just a bit right from the Aurora. The ship gradually increased in speed, staying only five or so meters from the sea. Steve saw the mist in the distance, and the pilot must have as well. As they entered the mist, the pilot raised the ship a bit and slowed down. Soon, two tall mountains came out of the mist, flying right at them. The Pilot slowed down, slowly laying the ship onto a small clearing, crushing two weak bendy trees. Steve watched as Avery and the two men on the side ran out of the room after a minute or two of just waiting. Steve patiently waited, starting to get annoyed. After what felt like two hours, the door opened again. Avery backed in slowly, holding onto a bunch of crumpled titanium. The two man squeezed through on the side, holding the other end. Steve recognized it as Ned's coffin. They set the coffin down behind Avery's chair and returned to their seats. Steve saw them all talking, debating on something. Steve would've gotten up, but he knew there was no chance of him actually walking.

They all sat down, and the ship lifted off. The nose pointed straight up, and Steve gripped onto the chair, ready. Steve was slammed into the back of the chair, which was then slammed into the wall. The chair slid around, the ship sliding around to avoid being locked on. Already, they were slamming into the atmosphere hard enough to create plasma. They passed the cloud layer, and only accelerated from there. Red lights started to flash, but they kept on thrusting. Suddenly, the ship dived to the right, and the windshield was filled with an intense light. They were safe in the cabin of the Sunbeam, but it still caused, even more, lights to start flashing.

They were out of the atmosphere, and the Sunbeam was still going directly up. Steve soon fell asleep, still tired from the whole ordeal.

When he woke up, he was still in the chair, and they were in space. Already out of the solar system, speeding to the nearest gate. The three others were left in there, and everybody shared rationed food and water. Steve was kept in the cabin and was never allowed to leave, in case he caught the disease. It would take them two weeks to get to the nearest gate, and an extra day to meet with an Alterra ship willing to take them to safety. They all regained both their hearing, but also the line burned into their retina. But, Steve was the only one who was allowed to instantly go to a rehab station. The other three spent the five years Stine spent in rehab in suspended animation, as scientist studied for a cure. They found one, but it was expensive. It was paid by Alterra as a welcome to the three after surviving such a horrid crash and discovering aliens who could create things stronger than they could. They all spent roughly the same four years in rehab, but they were at last allowed to go back to the galaxy. They attending Ned's funeral of course, along with his own dad, Albert Goddan, who had survived the crash but also the disease long enough to outlive his son.

The four didn't live a 'happy' life, and Albert died shortly after only two years.

 **A/N: HOLY SHIT IT'S FUCKING DONE HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT! Almost two years, if I remember correctly, 32 chapters, and ALMOST three different school years. Only a day off. Oh, and I think seven different states, this was written in. I'm going to be making a second 'Subnautica' story, and probably with an actual plan for my plot, rather than just planning it one chapter at a time. That might fix some plot holes.**

 **Thanks for reading this mess! Loved writing it, even if it was slow and rather draining! Have a good ol' day!**


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